He has, however, gotten a wee bit pretentious since he’s worth more money than Og, which does tend to limit your social circle.
Robin Williams has always been sort of funny but he has never been awesome the way Eddie Murphy was. When I was a little kid, Robin Williams was sort of funny, in a goofy way in Mork & Mindy. And his standup was kind of manic and funny. But almost from the beginning of his movie career, Robin Williams has played mostly sappy, “hey you squares, stop your pencil pushing and learn to love each other” kind of roles. I can’t think of a single really awesome Robin Williams movie.
Steve Martin, well you may be right about that. The Jerk and LA Story and Roxanne were all great. Cheaper by the Dozen? Pink Panther? I could not imagine watching these movies. On the other hand, as someone said, Steve Martin has recently written some pretty funny things for the New Yorker.
As the lead, or otherwise? Because his genie in Aladdin kicked ass.
His post-burns standup film – Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip – was hilarious.
Jo Jo Dancer: Your Life Is Calling – not so much.
I heard once that Martin was actually a frustrated song-and-dance man; that’s why he did Pennies from Heaven.
I’m talking about the former category.
Andrew Dice Clay was a flash in the pan, and the joke got old pretty fast and his fans moved on. It’s not that he changed his act and that his old fans didn’t like him any more. It’s that people just got tired of his act.
I submit that is NOT what happened to Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy went from making one kind of movie to a completely different kind of movie.
Yes he made and makes a lot of money making these movies, and yes I wish I made as much money as he does. I’m sure he will manage to make it through another day flying around in his private jet while I sit here typing this in my tiny apartment.
But that’s not really the point I’m getting at, because I’m not interested in his personal finances (except for the purpose of envying them). I’m interested in what happened to his comedy career.
And I guess maybe it’s not that complicated. I think that one thing that seems to happen in comedy is that people realize that there is a lot of money to be made in making comedies mostly aimed at kids. And kids are not very demanding when it comes to comedy, so you can use the same goofy plotline and exaggerated sight gags, and it is still funny to kids, I guess. And you make a lot of money, and to hell with your old fans, because coming up with all that new edgy material was hard work. And it’s easier just to make a movie about a guy pretending to be a woman and then there’s a scene where he starts to fall in love with the young woman, but she HATES him when he’s NOT dressed as a woman, but she confides in him when he’s dressed as a woman, and then have a scene where a man tries to handle a houseful of kids and the kids are running around like maniacs and breaking things, but then somehow he is magically transformed and in the next scene the kids are all well behaved, and there is a nosy neighbor and she …
Agree about Live on the Sunset Strip.
Also agree that Richard Pryor made a whole string of kind of dumb movies, such as The Toy after making some insanely funny movies. Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder was hilarious.
Maybe it’s just that Richard Pryor kept doing standup and that standup was maybe the best standup ever that anybody ever did and that anybody will ever do.
I heard the same thing, and I believe it. He did a thing with Gilda Radner on SNL years ago that was simultaneously great and hilarious. You have to have talent in order to crack people up when you dance. He knows exactly how to capitalize on his lankiness, how to mug at the right times…he really is a genius.
Well, there’s no accounting for tastes, of course, and I’m probably about 20 years older than you, so I don’t know what you consider “awesome.”
But I think that Williams’ first HBO comedy specials were some of the most hysterical stuff anyone’s ever done. And I’ve seen pretty much every one of his 60 or so feature films, and I can’t agree that they’re “mostly sappy.” A few, yes. But he’s demonstrated some real acting skill in addition to his known talent for comedy. I consider the following Robin Williams films, if not awesome, very good performances in entertaining films:
Popeye
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Awakenings
The Fisher King
Aladdin
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Birdcage
Good Will Hunting
Bicentennial Man
One Hour Photo
YMMV.
IMHO, one of the most interesting examples of this phenomenon is Chevy Chase, who became very big with SNL, largely on the strength of “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not.” He left the show after just one season to pursue a movie career, and did a few decent films (Foul Play, Fletch, etc.) over the next decade and a half. But he hasn’t done much worth watching since about 1990.
The real nadir of his career was his 1993 late-night talk show. It only ran for 14 episodes in the fall of 1993, and was appallingly bad. I watched almost every episode because I couldn’t believe how awful it was. It was like watching a car wreck: I just couldn’t look away. There was a large fish tank on the set behind him, and most of the time the fish were more interesting than what was going on in front of them.
The difference between Chevy Chase and, for instance, Murphy, Williams, or Martin, is that, IMHO, Chase has far less natural talent than any of them. He rocketed to great fame very quickly, but unlike the others, he didn’t really have the chops to capitalize on it. Has he ever done a decent serious dramatic role?
Don’t get me wrong: I like him. I was a fan before SNL, when he was on the The Great American Dream Machine and the National Lampoon Radio Hour, and had seen him live on stage in Lemmings. But he just ran out of steam fairly early in his career. It’s a shame.
Today I saw the preview for Murphy’s next movie, Meet Dave. He has two roles: a quarter-inch high alien, and the human-sized robot body he pilots, which keeps acting goofy because it’s difficult to control.
In other words, his next movie was inspired by an episode of Pinky and the Brain. 'Nuff said.
Corollary: who wouldn’t want to go back to 1988 with a copy of Are We Done Yet and shove it in Ice Cube’s face screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK?!?”
Dead Poets Society?
Fuckin’ love that movie.
Obviously there is a lot of YMMV here, but I would say that Eddie Murphy has come out pretty well for an ex SNL actor. I agree that his current crop of movies aren’t at all to my taste, but many are pretty good family freindly fun. Delerious, Raw, and most of his SNL stuff was not at all family freindly. Trading places was a bit complicated, but I found Coming to America to be pretty much equivalent to the stuff he is doing now. I thought The Nutty Professor was fine. The sequel was just cashing in. He definitely did have a spat of really bad stuff for a while, but I think he has more or less recovered into the family freindly humor genre. Comedians are almost always pretty short lived, so the fact that he’s found a consistent little niche is really a testament to how good he is.
Good Morning Viet Nam
Roxanne.
Why do people forget that movie? Wonderful.
Who on earth would give Eddie Murphy $20 million for a motion picture today? Why not just set the money on fire? At least it will provide some warmth.
*Fisher King * was pretty damn good, and so was Good Will Hunting.
I agree. Aside from Murphy, Murray and Martin (what’s with all the “m’s”?), the only other truly successful film comedians on SNL that rate are Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler.
Joan Rivers. The only thing that hasn’t plummeted is her face.