An average movie

Even though I wasn't expecting much, since it was one of the last movies starring Eddie Murphy which I hadn't see yet, I thought I might as well give it a try. Like many other actors, Murphy thought he could be a director and with this project, he went all the way, as he produced, wrote the whole thing and even played the lead character. He even managed to get his big idol, Richard Pryor, to get on board as well and it sounded pretty cool on paper to have those two guys in the same movie. Unfortunately, Eddie Murphy thought he might as well make a period piece since he never had the opportunity to play one before (he never made another one afterwards). Well, that was a really misguided choice and while watching this, I was wondering why he didn't make a period feature taking place in the 60's or the 70's since he grew up in those decades. He must have had some interesting knowledge about this time period, instead of going further in the past, telling some story about some culture he obviously knew nothing about. Anyway, the whole thing was just terribly tedious, the directing was lifeless and most of the jokes were just not funny. The only redeeming feature was Richard Pryor who had a nice delivery and, from time to time, a nice one-liner but that was definitely not enough to save this flick. To conclude, I think my rating is actually pretty generous and I don't think it is really worth a look, except maybe if you are a die-hard fan of Eddie Murphy.

5/10