The year was 2007 and Eddie Murphy, while on an awards season high from his performance in Dreamgirls, released a movie called Norbit to the masses. On paper, it had all the signature ingredients that have made his previous comedies resonate, and yet it was also all so wrong. The movie was a commercial success, but it was met with near-universal dismal reviews, and some out there think it cost Murphy the Oscar that year because it was released before voting closed for the Academy Awards. Whatever its legacy may be today, it’s being hilariously rediscovered today and many are taking to Letterboxd to share their not-so-kind reviews of the film.
It’s unclear why Letterboxd users are suddenly rediscovering Norbit, but it has been seeing its fair share of reviews within the last few days. The movie is available on Amazon Prime Video, so maybe it was an offbeat spooky season choice for viewers as they closed out Halloween. Either way, the reviews are pretty amusing and could set up Norbit for its next stage as quality “so bad that it’s good” programming when you need something to pass the time.
User Forest Marshall wrote in their 2-and-a-half-star review, “I vaguely remember this movie being an extended, hour-and-a-half-long fart joke.” This is a fairly accurate assessment since most of the critical reviews at the time of its release called the movie out for being crude and one long fart joke. User Josh M, in his one-star review, called it a “Halloween classic,” but went on to set up a sequence that he found so bad that he had to tell users to skip it by saying:
“OK I was just going to do the ironic letterboxd review thing and leave it but there is a part of this film that is so shockingly bad i think it should actually be studied. i urge you please don’t bother watching this thing in full, but please pull it up and skip to roughly 1:34:25 and watch the next 25 seconds because this sequence of events is so insane it made my jaw physically drop like a cartoon character ……….”
Check out some more hilarious reviews below that don’t help Norbit’s case as a critical masterpiece.
Pachylord: “I genuinely think this movie was a fever dream”
Ben D: “Better than any Oscar-winner of the past decade.”
Ethan W: “I woke up and this was playing on Amazon auto play after joyride and this scared the shit out of me.”
Lewis: “Might be the worst movie ive ever watched idk”
Connor Ezyaguirre: “This was exactly as bad as I expected. Props to Eddie Griffin and Katt Williams as Norbit’s ex-pimp friends.”
Hunter Gerace: “Someone at the Halloween party that I was at totally just put this on the TV before passing out on the couch at 12am, so I watched it passively. The f*** you mean this is the same director as Good Burger?! (How YOU doin’?)”
Norbit Wasn’t Loved by Critics
As Hunter Gerace pointed out, the film comes from director Brian Robbins, who did lend his directorial talents to 1997’s Good Burger. But he also directed Varsity Blues and Hardball, so let’s cut the guy some slack for turning Dawson into a football star and making us cry like babies over “G-Baby’s” fate in the Keanu Reeves-led baseball movie. A Norbit can be forgiven when those films are also a part of your filmography.
Related Eddie Murphy Followed Up His Oscar Nomination with a Career-Worst Performance (or 3)
Eddie Murphy was nominated for an Oscar for ‘DreamGirls,’ but critics thought his next movie ‘Norbit’ was awful.
Co-written by Murphy, Norbit follows the comedian as the titular character as he’s reunited with his childhood sweetheart Kate (Thandie Newton). However, in the way of that reunion is his morbidly obese wife Rasputia (also played by Murphy), who he is in a long-suffering marriage with, and her brothers, who also make Norbit’s life difficult. The film also stars Terry Crews, Clifton Powell, Cuba Gooding Jr., Eddie Griffin, Katt Williams and more.
Despite grossing $159 million worldwide on a $60 million budget, the film was ravaged by critics, currently carrying a dismal 9 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a consensus that reads, “Coming off his Oscar-nominated performance in Dreamgirls, the talented-but-inconsistent Eddie Murphy plays three roles in Norbit, a cruel, crass, stereotype-filled comedy that’s more depressing than funny.”Norbit was also nominated for eight Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture. The film went on to win three out of its eight nominations, with all three wins going to three different roles that Murphy played in the film.
Release Date February 8, 2007
Director Brian Robbins
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