Nutty Professor II: The Klumps

As good as Eddie Murphy was in The Nutty Professor, with his uncanny portrayal of not only the large and lonely academic Sherman Klump and his abrasive id, Buddy Love, but also several of Sherman's relatives, who'd have imagined that he could stretch the Falstaffian family's two brief dinner-table scenes into an entire movie? With this sequel, Murphy takes to its apex his Peter Sellers-like gift for multiple mimicry and for disappearing completely inside a variety of characters (not to mention inside make-up wizard Rick Baker's mounds of latex). His achievement here is to create not a character but a family that, for all its members' idiosyncrasies and disagreements, functions as an organic unit. Oh, and they're all funny as hell.

Buddy and the other Klumps serve as alter egos for Sherman, who's embarrassed by his own appetites. In order not to blow his engagement to fellow scientist Denise (a lovely but stiff Janet Jackson), Sherman uses gene therapy to split Buddy off into a separate person, but both men suffer drastic side effects. The collisions of Sherman, his relatives, and Buddy create comic sequences that build and resonate on enough levels to keep psychology thesis writers busy for years. The chemical reactions among the Klumps also create a byproduct of envelope-pushing toilet humor. (Two of the screenwriters are American Pie's Weitz brothers.) Just as Sherman can't exist without Buddy, so, apparently, can rich comedy about family not exist without vulgar gags about flaming flatulence, horny hamsters, and flapping, flabby, flesh. At the Harbour Mall, Hoyts Providence Place 16, Opera House, Showcase, Tri-Boro, and Woonsocket cinemas.
-- Gary Susman