The Problem With The Eddie Murphy Comeback
For years now, the entire comedy community, as well as myself, have patiently awaited the second coming. With the fanaticism of a cult we have sat around and tried to decipher all of the little clues that have been left for us, trying to figure out the day it shall finally happen and we will all be delivered. I’m talking of course about the Eddie Murphy comeback.
At the SNL 40th Anniversary, Eddie was treated like royalty, and rightfully so. Eddie Murphy joined the cast of Saturday Night Live at the age of 19, and for five straight years he was the comedy machine that kept SNL alive. From James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party and Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood to Gumby and Buckwheat, Murphy kept turning out characters and classics that kept SNL in the cultural lexicon when most people assumed the show was finished.
Around that time, Eddie Murphy began a film career that consistently turned out hit after hit. The first, 48 Hrs, introduced the majority of Americans to Eddie Murphy’s street wise comedic persona that would continue in Trading Places and, perhaps Eddie’s biggest hit, Beverly Hills Cop. He released two stand up specials, Delirious and Raw, that, despite the material that now seems dated and a bit hateful when looked at through a modern eye, are still regarded as some of the best specials of all time. Eddie even became the first current cast member to ever host the show, much to the ire of his friend, Joe Piscapo, who suggested that he should host the show over Murphy as Frank Sinatra.
After retiring from standup, and a box office slump at the beginning of the 90’s, Eddie began a rebound with The Nutty Professor. However, this rebound was short lived as Murphy began focusing more and more on family friendly projects. While the animated ones, such as Mulan and the Shrek series, went on to become big hits with audiences and the box office, his live-action projects were met with more and more scorn. People began hoping for the comeback that would bring him back into the public’s good graces, and they got it briefly with Eddie’s turn as singer James “Thunder” Early in the 2006 movie-musical Dreamgirls, which earned Eddie a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. The next year though, Eddie was back in bland to terrible family friendly fair like Norbit and Meet Dave. The world went back to waiting for the Eddie Murphy renaissance.
Then 2011 arrived. This was the year. This was OUR year. This is when the media and the comedy community at large KNEW that Eddie Murphy would return to form. Tower Heist, a film where Eddie Murphy would once again assume a street-wise comedic persona, was set to come out, BET was preparing a special in honor of Eddie Murphy’s career, and Brett Ratner, the director of Tower Heist, was producing the Oscars and lined up Murphy to host. The stars were aligning, but it was not meant to be. Tower Heist was seen as mediocre and Brett Ratner’s use of homophobic slurs led to him being asked to step down from his position at the Oscars, and Eddie followed. Once again, Murphy failed to rise to the occasion.
Fall of 2014 was the next opportunity for the return to form. After a falling out with SNL due to a David Spade joke in the 90’s about his artistic slump, Murphy was finally going to return to Saturday Night Live for the first time in over 30 years. The announcement made everyone lick their lips in anticipation. The symbolism was just perfect. Eddie Murphy would return to where he started in order to restart his career. Many wondered what sketches he would resurrect and watched the show waiting for that big moment. Chris Rock came out to give a heartfelt speech, Eddie took the stage to thunderous applause, and that was pretty much it. After a laugh free minute and a half of Eddie thanking everyone and having a false ending, the show went to a commercial, and like any good cult, we all returned to the drawing board.
It wasn’t until a string of tweets that Norm Macdonald published, describing Murphy turning down the guaranteed hit of playing Bill Cosby in the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch due to not wanting to “kick a man while he’s down” (Though one can easily argue that Cosby is ripe for the kicking), that I began to understand why Murphy seems to not be able to achieve that return to form we all want. The answer is actually really simple. He doesn’t care about it nearly as much as we do. I’m not saying that Mr. Murphy does not care about the quality of his work, it is clear in interviews that he is aware of how his work is perceived as of late by many, and the refusal to begin work on Beverly Hills Cop IV until he finds the script that is perfect. Murphy would rather play music with his band and maybe tell jokes between songs a’la fellow stand-up turned touring musician Steve Martin. After all, as he told Rolling Stone magazine in 2011, “One of the things that’s really cool is whenever they talk about stand-up, they’ll mention me with all those guys, like, Pryor, Lenny Bruce, but I haven’t done it since I was 27, so why fuck with it?”.
To him, the idea of an Eddie Murphy renaissance doesn’t hold the same kind of appeal. This is a man who has plenty of money in the bank, spent years making movies that he believed his children would love and actually be able to watch, and who’s legacy as one of comedy’s greats is pretty safely secured. The appeal of now creating a body of work that he enjoys the process of making and can be proud of may simply override any need to regain his status as a Hollywood icon, and why shouldn’t it?
I can’t promise that I won’t put Eddie Murphy back in the role of a man trying to make his big comeback. It’s hard to not cast your idols in such simple cinematic roles after years of watching them in Hollywood films after all, but I will say that we may save ourselves a lot of misplaced frustration if we accept that Eddie Murphy was the biggest star in the world at one time and now he is not, and that’s okay. After creating so many great movies, saving SNL, and helping launch the careers of many other comedians, don’t we owe it to Eddie Murphy to finally let him off our pedestal?
