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Daily News
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Murphy Trades Fat Suit for Space Suit
With the Oscar overlook applause still ringing in his ears, Eddie Murphy decides to boldly go where he’s flopped before.
Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 3:15 PM
By Dennis Michael
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Warner Bros.
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Danger, Mr. Robinson!
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Remember the science-fiction comedy The Adventures of Pluto Nash, a film star Eddie Murphy conceded as one of two genuine career flops on Barbara Walters’ recent Oscar show special? Well, apparently Murphy has already forgotten those words, because he’s about to navigate the galaxy again with the help of his Norbit pilot.
It’s one thing to have the Oscar curse conjured up by third parties and-or outside, unfortunate circumstances. But it’s quite another to seemingly will it to come to your front door, less than a month after winning the damn thing. If Jennifer Hudson runs into Murphy in the halls of the William Morris Agency, which represents both of them, she has every right to launch into a stirring rendition of, “And I Am Going to Tell You (I Am Not Getting)…”
The film is entitled Starship Dave (laughing yet?) and is all about a craft that appears to people on earth in the form of a human being. Playing both the part of the space craft’s captain and that of its terrestrial alter ego is, of course, the latex loving Murphy. Once on Planet Earth, the human half of him falls in love with a woman known among her friends for picking perennial losers in that department.
Norbit director Brian Robbins will start shooting within a couple of weeks, with a cast that also features Gabrielle Union, Ed Helms and Elizabeth Banks. Is this 20th Century Fox farce Eddie’s way of showing Hollywood the finger, after they snubbed his Best Supporting performance in Dreamgirls in favor of Alan Arkin’s Sunshine squib? Or are his WMA handlers simply restating their belief that multiple role comedy box office receipts greed is good?
Murphy may once again laugh all the way to the bank. But there’s no avoiding the fact that this feels like an artistically bankrupt, post-Oscars move.
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