Stream It or Skip It?

Eddie Murphy was still a teenager when he leapt from the stand-up comedy stages of New York City to star on Saturday Night Live, and by the age of 21, was starring alongside Nick Nolte in 48 Hrs. By the age of 25, he’d won a Grammy, released a hit HBO comedy special, and become a superstar thanks to Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop. Four decades and dozens of movies later, he’s ready to invite the camera crew into his mansion for a nostalgic look back on his career.

BEING EDDIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist:  Angus Wall, a two-time Oscar winner (both of his Academy Awards came from editing, for The Social Network and for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), makes his feature-length directorial debut here.

A cavalcade of stars, including Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Tracy Morgan, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kevin Hart, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Brian Grazer, pay tribute to Murphy’s comedy genius as well as his ability to break racial barriers and inspire generations of younger comedians. But the narrative arc of Murphy’s filmography and life story is told by Murphy himself, straight to camera, either while sitting down or while walking around his palatial home in southern California.

“I wanted to be as funny as Richard (Pryor). I wanted to be cool like Elvis. And I wanted to be as big as The Beatles,” Murphy recalls. And for most of the 1980s, he was!

We’re reminded of this thanks to clips of Murphy in his early-80s run on SNL, his initial break-out on 48 Hrs., followed by Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop. We learn that Trading Places was meant initially as another buddy vehicle for Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, but Pryor setting himself aflame infamously gave the younger comic a crack at it. Murphy suggests his search for real-life love helped inspire the storyline for Coming to America. We’re also treated to montages from Boomerang, The Nutty Professor, Bowfinger, and Shrek.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Another documentary about a celebrated comedy star of the 1980s came out earlier this year, but unlike the Emmy-winning posthumous look at Paul Reubens in Pee-wee as Himself, Being Eddie gives its subject free rein. Murphy is fully in charge of telling the story he wants to tell about himself.

Performance Worth Watching: Because we haven’t seen or heard as much from Murphy as perhaps comedy fans would’ve liked (at least until his 2019 return to guest host SNL, which we’ll get to), seeing and hearing what he chooses to tell us now feels even more significant, as much as what he’s still withholding.

Sex And Skin: None.

Our Take: You probably didn’t need to hear other comedy superstars heap praise upon Murphy to believe the hype, but they’re lined up here, anyhow.

“He changed the way we view comedy,” said Jamie Foxx.

“The rules are just different for him,” said Jerry Seinfeld, who in comparing Murphy to other “magic people” whose skill sets appear otherworldly to us mere mortals, noted that most of those other larger-than-life characters typically find their lives exploding all-too-early in a ball of flames. “But not Eddie,” Seinfeld said.

Dave Chappelle added that while Murphy enjoyed a front row seat to life, “the core of him seems unscathed by it.” And at the end of the documentary, Chappelle suggested that Murphy somehow survived superstardom just by “being Eddie.” Which is a wild way to get to the title. But by this point, comedy fans have realized that this documentary doesn’t so much reveal what it was like to be Eddie, as much as give us the opportunity to be with him for a little while, to inhabit the same airspace. Even if only indirectly through the camera lens.

There are moments, albeit rare, where we get glimpses of the real Murphy.

In an opening scene, Murphy echoes the old Bruce Springsteen lyric about 500 channels and nothing’s on, despite five of those channels broadcasting Murphy’s movies. “I be like, ‘There ain’t s–t to watch! I don’t want to see none of this s–t,’“ he jokes.

There are times where he’s walking alone in his cavernous home, countered by scenes with some of his 10 children and many grandkids, casually enjoying each other’s company. But we only see Murphy in his most recent relationship, with his partner Paige of the past 12 years. Any past mistakes, whether personal or professional, are glossed over or not mentioned at all. Much is made of footage from his week guest-hosting SNL in 2019, heralded as his homecoming after being scorned by a David Spade joke in the mid-’90s, as if we all didn’t see his awkward appearance in SNL40. The idea that Murphy should’ve won an Oscar for Dreamgirls but didn’t because Norbit flopped is broached, but never investigated. This documentary isn’t interested in asking questions or seeking answers, choosing instead to bathe us in nostalgia.

There’s a moment in archival footage where David Letterman suggested we saw the real Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls, only for Murphy to quickly shoot him down, insisting we’ve never seen the real Eddie onscreen. Except current-day Murphy tells us he used his real pain from his real-life divorce to fuel his portrayal in that movie. Which would be great if we had ever learned anything about that relationship in this doc.

Our Call: Being Eddie sadly is nowhere near as chaotically thrilling as Being John Malkovich. And yet, for anyone born in Pete Davidson’s generation or younger, it must be quite a thrill to realize Murphy enjoyed a legendary run even before Shrek! So ultimately, STREAM IT.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.