In Brief: ‘Coyote Ugly’ and ‘Nutty Professor II: The Klumps’

The dreadful Coyote Ugly seems to have been made for prepubescent dirty old men. Piper Perabo plays an aspiring songwriter who moves from Jersey to New York to Make It and ends up, as one might expect in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, wriggling on a bar top with a bevy of other Barbies while unshaven guys slaver and whoop. Somehow this is all meant to be empowering for the women. I’m not saying one goes to a film like this for intellectual stimulation, but be forewarned: It makes Flashdance seem like Copenhagen… . Eddie Murphy once again divides himself into an entire family in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, and the result is an amazingly virtuosic, lived-in piece of acting that deserves to be more than the centerpiece in what is essentially a racially oriented gross-out teen pic. Murphy’s characters here seem to personify both his best and worst images of himself, as well as the ways in which blacks traditionally have been caricatured in Hollywood. He needs a movie to match the artist he has become.

In Brief: ‘Coyote Ugly’ and ‘Nutty Professor […]