The Curious Case of Eddie Murphy – Part Three

When we last left The Curious Case of Eddie Murphy series, it was the end of the 80s and Murphy had experienced the box office and critical disappointment of his directorial debut Harlem Night and starred in the lackluster Another 48 HRS., where he seemed to just be going through the motions.

The nineties would bring the question of whether Murphy could stay relevant and remain a top box office attraction. After the 48 HRS sequel, he would take two years off between film projects, but he did manage to appear with Magic Johnson and model Iman in Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” video.

He would return to the box office in the summer of 1992 with Boomerang, a romantic comedy that received middling reviews, but a decent if not spectacular box office performance ($70 million). The film itself is certainly watchable and has some very funny moments, but is overall just OK. There was certainly high hopes that Boomerang would be a return to form for Eddie, who came up with the story and was written by team behind Coming to America. Nowadays, Boomerang is more interesting because we get to see very early performances from Martin Lawrence, Halle Berry, and Chris Rock.

Murphy’s next three films would represent a tremendous slide in Murphy’s career and box office power. In December 1992 came his first undeniable flop: The Distinguished Gentleman. A mostly lame comedy about a con artist who gets elected to Congress, Gentleman is kind of a mess that switches between broad comedy and attempts at serious political commentary. It fails badly and audiences took note. Gentleman only made around $40 million box office, a severely low number for a Murphy comedy and received bad reviews.

Before we get to Murphy’s next box office failure, Michael Jackson did return the music video favor in 1993 for Murphy’s track “What’s Up With You”, a video that’s truly awful in a rather hilarious way.

This brings us to 1994’s Beverly Hills Cop III. Again, there was hope to be had. The third installment re-teamed Eddie with director John Landis, who helmed both Trading Places and Coming to America. No other way to really this: Beverly Hills Cop III sucked. So much so that Murphy would denounce it in interviews years later. It’s basic premise was Die Hard at an amusement park. It was low on jokes and the action scenes were majorly inferior to other films being released at the time. More than ever, Murphy seems to be sleepwalking through it. Ten years after the original (which made $234 million), the third would gross only $40 million and was a true box office disaster. 

Murphy’s fall at the box office would get even worse the following year. However, in this blogger’s opinion, what followed was fun more interesting than either Distinguished Gentleman or Beverly III. 1995’s Vampire in Brooklyn at least had Murphy trying something different. A horror comedy directed by the great Wes Craven, Vampire comes from a story by Murphy and his brother Charlie (who we all remember from “Chappelle’s Show” and his classic stories about Rick James and Prince). It doesn’t really work, but at least it’s a chance to see Murphy try something new. Audiences, however, did not agree. At all. Vampire would be Murphy’s lowest grossing movie ever with a pathetic gross of around $14 million.

With the three box office bombs in a row, it reached the point where David Spade on “Saturday Night Live”, in his Hollywood Minute segment, showed a picture of Murphy and simply stated “Oh look, a falling star.” Rumor has it that Murphy did not take well to the joke, especially considering he was being mocked on a show he made brilliant contributions to.

Vampire in Brooklyn would mark the end of an exclusive contract Murphy signed only to do movies with Paramount. He was eager to move on to other projects at other companies and that is where one of the biggest film comebacks in recent history was made. This happened where Murphy decided to remake a Jerry Lewis comedy and that is where The Curious Case of Eddie Murphy – Part Four will begin.