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Norbit Rice (Eddie Murphy) was a sweet (yet painfully ugly) boy who was raised at the Golden Wonton Restaurant and Orphanage, run by Mr. Wong (Murphy again). Once he became old enough to go to school, the only person who ever stood up for poor Norbit was Rasputia, a giant girl with a powerful family of thugs. Rasputia beat up all the bullies at school and made Norbit her boyfriend. She made Norbit feel like he had a real family—so he married her.
Years later, though, Norbit discovers that his abusive, morbidly obese wife (also Murphy) is cheating on him with her power tap dance instructor. He’s beside himself with anger and hurt—until he runs into Kate (Thandie Newton), his only friend from the orphanage. Kate is back in town, hoping to buy the orphanage from Mr. Wong. And not only is she as sweet and wonderful and perfect as she was as a kid, but she’s also gorgeous. And she’s engaged to a slime ball named Deion (Cuba Gooding Jr.).
It doesn’t take long before Norbit realizes that he’s madly in love with Kate. Unfortunately, two things stand in his way of true happiness: Deion, and his big, fat, jealous wife, Rasputia.
Norbit set a new record for me: it was the first time I sat through a comedy without laughing. Groaning, yes. Cringing, yes. Covering my eyes and hoping it would go away, yes. But laughing, no. And coming from someone who loves a good stupid comedy as much as I do, that’s saying a lot. But Norbit isn’t so much a comedy as it is a painful rehashing of all the bad jokes you’ve ever heard. The characters have all been done before, and the laughs (and I use that word loosely) are cheap—mostly fat jokes, bad racial stereotypes, and a few pimp jokes (courtesy of Eddie Griffin).
Norbit is the stereotypical spineless, hen-pecked husband—whose nerdy boyish charm is enhanced by his look of perpetual constipation. Rasputia, on the other hand, is the thing that nightmares are made of. She speaks in a loud, shrill voice that makes her lines almost entirely unintelligible. In fact, the only thing she says that you can actually understand is “How you doin’?” which she says (by my estimation) approximately 500 times during the movie. Yeah, it was cute when Joey Tribbiani said it on Friends in 1994—but coming from Eddie Murphy in a fat-woman suit, it’s just irritating. And, just for the record, I’m pretty sure I could have lived a perfectly full and happy life without ever seeing Eddie Murphy playing a fat woman strutting around in a gigantic bikini. It’s an image that I will never, ever be able to erase from my memory. Thanks a lot, Eddie.
If your idea of great comedy includes watching a fat woman get in and out of a tiny car…or watching a fat woman crush her tiny husband in bed…or watching a fat woman prance around into clothing that’s much too small…then you’ll find Norbit to be absolutely hilarious. But if this is what comedy is coming to, I fear that I may never laugh again.
