Word: klump
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Four decades and five Oscars later, Baker, 49, is still making the impossible believable. In this week's Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Baker again transforms Eddie Murphy into the Klump clan. In November he helps Jim Carrey give a Bronx cheer to the holidays in Ron Howard's live-action comedy Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Next year Baker creates an entire simian society in a remake of Planet of the Apes, with Mark Wahlberg. Baker calls it "a film I was born...
Murphy's enthusiasm is understandable. The success of his 1996 The Nutty Professor had a lot to do with a dinner scene that brought together five members of the hilariously obese Klump family--all played by Murphy. It was Baker who put the lumps in the Klumps: the movie's 400-lb. hero Sherman, brother Ernie, Mama, Papa and Granny. Baker also lobbied the cost-conscious producers to shoot the scene, which added about $1 million to the budget but proved to be the film's comic high point. The first Nutty grossed $270 million worldwide, revived Murphy's career...
...Klumps have bigger roles in Nutty II. "The process was algebraic from a scheduling standpoint," says director Peter Segal. Of 85 shooting days on the sequel, about 75 required Murphy to play a Klump. (To give Murphy's face time off from adhesives, a Klump-free day was scheduled each Wednesday.) It took an average of four hours to sculpt Murphy into a Klump--via foam-rubber facial appliances that had to be replaced each day and kept consistent through months of filming--then hours more for the end-of-day Klump-ectomy. "The edges are so thin...
...first time Eddie Murphy slapped on the layers of latex to play the lovably obese Sherman Klump, the result was the $140 million-grossing Nutty Professor. In predictable fashion, the studio promptly began plans to crank out a sequel. This second outing focuses predominantly on Sherman's Klump clans-so much so, in fact, that Universal is considering dropping the Nutty part and simply calling the film The Klumps. In lieu of his plans to get married (to Janet Jackson, of all people), Sherman decides to excise the DNA of his altar-ego, Buddy Love, from his system, but unwittingly...
...played seven characters, all brilliantly. The one unattractive figure, Buddy Love, was a wicked stretch of the Eddie Murphy personality that moviegoers had tired of: sleek, preening, abrasive, an overdog in love with itself. The other characters were marvels not just of makeup but also of comic sympathy; Sherman Klump and his pudgy, putrefactive family had humor and heart. The $130 million box-office take showed how much affection filmgoers still had for Murphy. They hoped it heralded a new Golden Age for the Golden Child...