Nutty Professor II: The Klumps

2000

Directed by Peter Segal

Welcome back to Movie Monday, where we’re continuing our methodical descent through my personal countdown of the 100 worst movies I’ve ever endured. This week we’re examining number 43: Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, the 2000 sequel that answered a question absolutely no one was asking – what if we took the charming multiple-character gimmick from the original Nutty Professor and made it the entire point of the movie? The result is a film so convinced that Eddie Murphy in fat suits equals automatic comedy gold that it forgot to include actual jokes, compelling characters, or any reason for its own existence beyond the sweet smell of box office revenue. And yes, as always, this represents my personal opinion. If you found genuine entertainment value in watching Murphy play dress-up for 106 minutes while the movie desperately searches for a plot worth caring about, then we clearly have different definitions of what constitutes a worthwhile sequel.

When Universal Pictures announced a follow-up to 1996’s The Nutty Professor, the decision made perfect business sense. The original had grossed over $273 million worldwide and proved that audiences would embrace Murphy’s return to family-friendly comedy after a string of R-rated misfires. The first film worked because it balanced Murphy’s multiple-character showcase with genuine heart, a surprisingly sweet love story, and enough self-awareness to keep the fat jokes from feeling mean-spirited. It was a crowd-pleaser that reminded everyone why Murphy had become a comedy superstar in the first place.

The Klumps takes one look at what made the original successful and promptly throws most of it out the window in favor of more Murphy, more makeup, and more flatulence jokes than any human being should be subjected to in a single sitting. It’s like watching someone receive feedback that their chocolate cake was delicious and responding by creating a new recipe that’s 90% chocolate and 10% everything else that actually made the cake work.

When Gimmicks Become Crutches

The fundamental problem with Nutty Professor II is that it mistakes the symptom for the disease. The original film’s success wasn’t due to Murphy playing multiple characters – that was simply the delivery mechanism for a story about self-acceptance, the dangers of vanity, and finding love despite personal insecurities. Sherman Klump’s transformation into Buddy Love worked because it represented his internal struggle made external, a classic Jekyll and Hyde dynamic wrapped in Murphy’s trademark energy and charm.

The sequel looks at those themes and says, “You know what? Let’s just have more Eddie Murphy.” Instead of deepening Sherman’s character or exploring new aspects of his personality, the film doubles down on the Klump family dinner scenes and makes them the centerpiece of the entire movie. What worked as comic relief in the original becomes the main attraction, like ordering a side of mashed potatoes and being served nothing but a bowl of butter.

Murphy plays eight different characters this time around – Sherman, Buddy Love, Mama Anna, Papa Cletus, Grandma Ida, brother Ernie, young Cletus, and fitness instructor Lance Perkins (though Lance mysteriously receives a credit despite never actually appearing in the film, which somehow feels appropriate for a movie this confused about its own content). The makeup work is technically impressive, and Murphy demonstrates considerable skill in creating distinct voices and mannerisms for each family member. But technical proficiency doesn’t automatically translate to entertainment value, and watching Murphy disappear under pounds of prosthetics gets old remarkably quickly when there’s nothing interesting for these characters to do.

The Klump family dinner scenes, which provided some of the original’s biggest laughs, are expanded into lengthy sequences that feel more like endurance tests than comedy gold. The conversations are louder, cruder, and somehow less funny than their predecessors, relying heavily on scatological humor and sexual dysfunction jokes that land with all the grace of a lead balloon. It’s comedy by volume rather than wit, assuming that if you make things loud and gross enough, audiences will mistake shock for humor.

The Plot That Time Forgot

While the original Nutty Professor had a simple but effective story – shy professor creates potion, becomes confident alter ego, learns to accept himself – the sequel gets bogged down in a convoluted mess involving youth serums, DNA extraction, and a plot that seems to have been assembled from rejected Honey, I Shrunk the Kids scripts.

Sherman has now created a fountain of youth formula, because apparently curing baldness wasn’t ambitious enough. When Buddy Love starts taking control of Sherman’s body at inconvenient moments (including during a marriage proposal to new love interest Denise, played by Janet Jackson), Sherman decides to permanently extract Buddy from his DNA. This leads to Buddy becoming a separate entity, corporate espionage involving pharmaceutical companies, and a climax featuring a giant hamster that sexually assaults the college dean while he’s wearing a fur coat.

If that last sentence made you do a double-take, welcome to the viewing experience of Nutty Professor II. The film throws increasingly bizarre plot developments at the screen without any apparent logic or consideration for whether these elements serve the story or characters. It’s like watching someone play Mad Libs with a science fiction movie, randomly inserting absurd elements without regard for narrative coherence.

The youth serum plot provides an excuse for more Murphy transformations (Papa Klump becomes young and sexually aggressive) while the Buddy Love extraction storyline serves mainly to separate Murphy from his most charismatic character for large portions of the film. When your sequel’s main achievement is removing the most entertaining element from your original movie, you might want to reconsider your creative strategy.

Janet Jackson and the Thankless Love Interest Role

Janet Jackson replaces Jada Pinkett Smith’s Carla from the original, not due to any creative decision but because Pinkett Smith was unavailable due to her marriage to Will Smith, pregnancy, and commitments to The Matrix sequels. This behind-the-scenes reality perfectly encapsulates the sequel’s approach – replace what worked with whatever’s available and hope audiences don’t notice the downgrade.

Jackson, to her credit, tries to bring warmth and chemistry to her scenes with Murphy, but she’s fighting an uphill battle against a script that views her primarily as a plot device rather than a character. Denise exists to provide Sherman with romantic motivation and to conveniently possess the DNA knowledge necessary to advance the science fiction elements of the story. She has no personality beyond “supportive girlfriend” and no agency beyond reacting to Sherman’s increasingly erratic behavior.

The original film gave Carla genuine moments of doubt and growth as she struggled to understand Sherman’s dramatic personality changes. Denise simply accepts that her boyfriend occasionally transforms into a narcissistic alter ego and moves on, because the script needs her to be understanding rather than realistic. It’s the kind of writing that treats female characters as accessories rather than people, and Jackson deserves better material to work with.

The romance feels perfunctory and obligatory, lacking the genuine sweetness that made Sherman and Carla’s relationship work in the original. When Sherman and Denise finally get married in the film’s conclusion, it feels more like checking an item off a screenplay checklist than the culmination of a meaningful emotional journey.

Special Effects That Showcase the Wrong Things

The makeup and prosthetics work in Nutty Professor II represents a significant technical achievement. The transformation of Murphy into various family members is seamless and impressive, demonstrating considerable artistry and craftsmanship. Unfortunately, the film’s obsession with showcasing these effects comes at the expense of everything else that makes a movie worth watching.

The extended family dinner scenes feel like makeup demonstrations rather than comedy sequences, with the camera lingering on Murphy’s various transformations as if we’re meant to applaud the technical wizardry rather than laugh at any actual jokes. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a chef spending so much time explaining their cooking techniques that they forget to make the food taste good.

The film’s other special effects fare considerably worse, particularly during the climactic sequence involving the giant hamster and various youth serum transformations. The digital effects look dated even by 2000 standards, creating a jarring disconnect between the impressive practical makeup work and the unconvincing computer-generated elements. When your movie features a scene where a CGI hamster sexually assaults Larry Miller while he’s dressed as a woman, you’ve officially entered territory where technical considerations should take a back seat to basic human dignity.

Box Office Success vs. Artistic Failure

Nutty Professor II opened with a massive $42.5 million weekend, setting a new record for Eddie Murphy films and proving that audiences were hungry for more Sherman Klump adventures. The film went on to gross over $166 million worldwide, making it a significant commercial success despite overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics.

This disconnect between commercial performance and critical reception perfectly illustrates the sequel’s fundamental problem – it gives audiences exactly what they think they want without considering whether that’s actually what would make for a good movie. The marketing campaign effectively sold the promise of “more Eddie Murphy characters” without revealing that more isn’t always better when there’s nothing interesting for those characters to do.

The film’s success also demonstrates the power of franchise recognition and summer moviegoing habits. Families looking for air-conditioned entertainment during July were willing to overlook the sequel’s obvious flaws in favor of familiar characters and broad physical comedy. But commercial success doesn’t validate creative choices, and The Klumps proves that you can make money while simultaneously squandering the goodwill built by a superior predecessor.

International audiences proved even more forgiving, helping push the worldwide total past the $166 million mark. However, these numbers represented a significant decline from the original’s $273 million global haul, suggesting that even audiences who initially embraced the sequel recognized its inferiority to the original film.

The Humor That Forgot to Be Funny

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Nutty Professor II is how thoroughly unfunny it manages to be despite having one of comedy’s most talented performers playing multiple roles. The film confuses gross-out humor with actual wit, assuming that flatulence jokes and sexual dysfunction gags are inherently hilarious regardless of context or timing.

The original film’s humor worked because it emerged from character and situation. Sherman’s awkwardness was endearing because we understood his insecurity and rooted for his success. Buddy Love’s arrogance was funny because it represented an obvious overcompensation for Sherman’s perceived inadequacies. The family dinner scenes provided comic relief that illuminated Sherman’s background while giving Murphy opportunities to showcase his range.

The Klumps abandons this character-based approach in favor of shock value and volume. The family members become caricatures rather than characters, existing primarily to deliver crude punchlines about bodily functions and sexual frustration. The jokes feel mean-spirited and desperate, lacking the affectionate tone that made the original’s comedy feel warm rather than cruel.

Murphy’s performances suffer from the same problem that plagues the script – more isn’t necessarily better. While his technical skill in differentiating the various characters remains impressive, the characters themselves become less distinct and memorable when they’re required to carry the entire film rather than provide seasoning for a larger story.

Critical Reception: When Everyone Agrees You’ve Failed

Nutty Professor II currently holds a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics consistently noting the film’s reliance on crude humor over genuine wit. Even positive reviews tended to be heavily qualified, praising Murphy’s technical skill while acknowledging the script’s numerous shortcomings.

Roger Ebert, who gave the film three stars, noted that while it was “very funny” and “never less than amazing,” he also described it as “raucous” and “scatological” – hardly ringing endorsements for a family comedy. Even critics who found elements to appreciate seemed to be grading on a curve, acknowledging entertainment value while recognizing significant creative failures.

Variety‘s Joe Leydon perfectly captured the film’s central problem: “Be prepared to laugh less at a lot more of the same thing in this overbearing but underwhelming sequel.” The film gives audiences exactly what the title promises – more Klumps – without considering whether quantity can substitute for quality.

The harshest criticism came from The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane, who dismissed Murphy’s multiple character work as “minstrelling” and accused the actor of “at once feeding us what we like and despising us for swallowing it.” While Lane’s language was provocative, his underlying point about the film’s cynical approach to audience expectations wasn’t entirely unfair.

Why The Klumps Earns Its Spot at Number 43

Nutty Professor II: The Klumps lands at number 43 on my worst movies list because it represents everything wrong with sequel thinking in Hollywood. Rather than building on what made the original successful, it isolates the most superficial elements and amplifies them while discarding the heart, wit, and genuine charm that made audiences care about Sherman Klump in the first place.

The film fails because it confuses gimmick with substance, assuming that technical proficiency can substitute for emotional investment. Murphy’s multiple character work becomes an end in itself rather than a means of exploring themes of identity, self-acceptance, and personal growth. It’s a movie that showcases considerable talent in service of absolutely nothing meaningful.

What makes this particularly frustrating is how unnecessary the failure was. The original film provided a solid foundation for exploring Sherman’s continued growth, his relationship with family and romantic partners, and the ongoing struggle between his insecure and confident selves. Instead, we get corporate espionage, youth serums, and sexually aggressive hamsters.

The sequel also demonstrates the dangers of commercial success without artistic consideration. The Klumps proved that audiences would pay to see Eddie Murphy in fat suits regardless of what those characters actually did, encouraging a trend of lazy sequel thinking that prioritized recognizable elements over compelling storytelling.

Most damaging of all, the film wastes Murphy’s considerable talents on material that doesn’t deserve them. Murphy remains one of comedy’s most gifted performers, capable of creating memorable characters and delivering both physical and verbal humor with equal skill. The Klumps treats him like a special effects showcase rather than a comedic artist, resulting in a film that’s technically impressive but emotionally hollow.

The Bottom Line

Nutty Professor II: The Klumps stands as a monument to misguided sequel logic and creative complacency. It’s a film that had every advantage – a beloved original to build upon, a talented star willing to commit fully to the material, and sufficient resources to realize any creative vision – and still managed to create something aggressively mediocre.

The movie succeeds as a technical exercise and fails as entertainment, showcasing impressive makeup work while forgetting to include genuine laughs, compelling characters, or any reason for audiences to care about what happens on screen. It’s comedy by committee, designed to hit specific market demographics rather than create anything resembling art or genuine entertainment.

In the end, The Klumps feels like a missed opportunity wrapped in expensive prosthetics. All the technical skill in the world can’t compensate for a fundamental lack of creative ambition, and no amount of Eddie Murphy can save a script that views him as a gimmick rather than a performer. It’s a sequel that proves more isn’t always better, and sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a successful movie is leave it alone.

Next week on Movie Monday, we’re diving into another sequel that forgot what made its predecessor work as we examine The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, a film that somehow managed to make a story about infinite possibilities feel utterly finite. Join me on December 15th as we explore how you can take a beloved children’s fantasy and drain it of wonder, magic, and basic narrative competence. Until then, remember: just because you can put Eddie Murphy in eight different fat suits doesn’t mean you should, and sometimes the most expensive special effect is the one that replaces genuine creativity.

What are your thoughts on Nutty Professor II: The Klumps? Did you find entertainment value in Murphy’s extended family showcase, or do you agree that it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what made the original work? Share your experiences in the comments below – I’d love to hear whether anyone can mount a defense for this triumph of technical achievement over storytelling sense.