Being Eddie (2025) * * *

 

Directed by: Angus Wall

Featuring:  Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson, John Landis, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Val Young

You can forgive Being Eddie for being borderline hagiography because it's pieced together nicely, showing us the mostly positive parts of Eddie Murphy's life and career.  Vampire in Brooklyn is noted as a career low point, but mostly the interviewees give us positive takes on Murphy with Murphy himself providing a more in-depth review of his life than we've ever seen before.  

Murphy seems at peace with himself, living in a posh California mansion and maintaining a loving relationship with his wife and ten children.  The children range in age from early 40's to toddlers, and Murphy lovingly describes them as his rock.  When Murphy discusses something funny, his laugh is different than the one we saw in his earlier movies.  What is still the same is his confidence and his comic ability.  He isn't boring, and the final scenes showing him playing with Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby puppets (harkening back to an early childhood memory), are very funny.  The Richard Pryor puppet itself is a howl.  

Murphy grew up on Roosevelt, Long Island and predicted he would be a star by the time he reached eighteen.   He was off by one year.  He joined SNL when he was 19 during the much-maligned 1980 season which was the first during Lorne Michaels' hiatus from the show.  Due to underwhelming ratings and unfavorable comparisons to the original Not Ready for Primetime Players who departed the show the previous year, all of the cast members except Murphy and Joe Piscopo were fired.  SNL was where some of Murphy's greatest characters like Mr. Robinson, Gumby, and Velvet Jones were formed, plus his spot-on celebrity impressions made him a household name before he ventured into the movies.  

48 Hrs. (1982) was his feature-film debut and what a start.  The scene in the redneck bar where Murphy's Reggie Hammond takes control of a roomful of people who hate him made him a star.  Then, we have Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop, which shot Murphy into orbit as one of the biggest box-office draws of the 80's.  Movies like Best Defense and The Golden Child aren't mentioned, although I found The Golden Child to be an amusing action adventure with Murphy playing against type.  The late 80's and early 90's brought about some flops, some of which aren't brought up, but then Murphy found himself on an upward career trajectory again after The Nutty Professor and a series of family-friendly hits like Daddy Day Care.  Dreamgirls pushed Murphy into awards consideration for the first time in his career.  He won a Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor but lost out on the Oscar to Alan Arkin in what was a definite upset.  

The documentary then focuses on Murphy's return to host SNL in the late 2010's.  He had not been on the show in any capacity since the David Spade "a falling star" joke about Murphy which hurt Murphy to his core.  He wasn't angry with Spade for telling the joke as much as he believed he was betrayed by SNL for allowing the joke to air.  Was Murphy a mite too sensitive?  Possibly, but he's honest about himself and why he stayed away from SNL for years until hosting.  It represented a full-circle moment for him and Being Eddie makes the same conclusion.  

Being Eddie isn't perfect, but it moves along briskly and allows for Murphy to present an openness we haven't really seen.  He lived a mostly non-controversial life, but the movie is about the gift that keeps on giving: Murphy's comedy and his stand-up.  Being Eddie broaches the subject as to when Murphy will ever return to stand-up after stepping away from it in the late 1980's, and Murphy is coy with his response, but that would be quite a return.