Dreamgirls Performance Killed By Norbit

I finally had an opportunity to watch Dreamgirls. If you have not seen it then I highly recommend that you watch and buy this fantastic movie. Not only did Jennifer Hudson give an Oscar worthy performance but so did Eddie Murphy. His performance was so good that I forgot that I was was looking at the actor/comedian that I have been watching since I first saw Eddie Murphy: Raw when I was in high school. To bad, in my opinion, that his stellar performance in Dreamgirls was killed by the ghastly portrayal of the man in the fat woman suit in Norbit.

Considering the timing in which Norbit came out I think that it had an influence on the voters for the Academy Award and cost Eddie the most coveted prize. His depiction of the star of the “chitlin” circuit in the deep south was fantastic. The fact that he was actually singing blew me away as well. We all remember his attempt at singing with “Party All the Time.” Though that song is lame it is still being played to this day on VH1 so that makes it a success no matter how you look at it. James “Thunder” Early was a great role for Eddie and showed that he does have true talent. Hopefully this role and the Golden Globe Award that he won will lead to more substantial roles in the future.

On a side note. Beyonce has no right to be upset about her role in the movie. There was nothing special about the Diana Ross imitation that she put in. Jennifer Hudson did a fantastic job and got everything she deserved and helped to opened the door for fat girls and black women in cinema, but Eddie just simply shot himself in the foot by doing yet another movie that he played all the colorful characters.

The season for black men wearing a fat suit and making black women look bad hopefully is over. I hope the lesson that Eddie learned from not bringing home the Oscar taught him that when you put in great work spread your performances out so that while your doing interviews for the good things you can tell a few jokes to make us forget about the bad.