Nutty Professor 2 - The Klumps
If like me you really enjoyed the first Nutty Professor film then like me you probably enjoyed the scenes with the Klump family immensely. The makers of the Klumps obviously realised this fact and decided to base the sequel around the whole family.
If like me you really enjoyed the first Nutty Professor film then like me you probably enjoyed the scenes with the Klump family immensely. The makers of the Klumps obviously realised this fact and decided to base the sequel around the whole family instead of just concentrating on Professor Sherman Klump.
If you didn’t enjoy the Nutty Professor then it’s probably not worth you reading on, as you will certainly hate this sequel. Although the first film wasn’t exactly sophisticated humour, the sequel is even less so. Anyway, I’ll save any further comments for later on, for now onto the basic plot.
Plot
Life is looking pretty rosy for Sherman Klump. Not only is he getting married to the beautiful Professor Denise Gaines (Janet Jackson), he’s also invented a formula to reverse the ageing process and a pharmaceutical company wants to buy the formula for one hundred and fifty million dollars.
Sherman does have a problem though, his alter ego Buddy Love keeps taking over his mind and making him do things that could jeopardise his future. In an effort to get rid of buddy forever, Sherman removes Buddy’s DNA from his body. All seems well until Buddy comes to life in a lab accident. With Buddy now trying to steal the youth serum to sell himself, Sherman once again has to overcome his old enemy.
Video / Audio
The video quality as you might expect from such a new film is excellent. The picture is in a 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and is very bright and strong coloured with sharp definition.
The audio track makes a surprising amount of use of all the channels considering this is a comedy. The track is in Dolby Digital 5.1 format and is very effective.
Extras
The Directors Commentary is I think one of the best director only commentary tracks that I’ve heard on a DVD. Peter Segal manages to keep just the right balance of light hearted and amusing dialogue and yet somehow keeps enough insight into the film to still make it interesting. He doesn’t go into great technical detail but just gives an overview of how they did some of the trickier scenes like the family dinner.
The Spotlight on Location feature is around 25-minutes long. This includes a lot of cast & crew interviews but also includes a behind the scenes look at how they did the big family dinner scene.
The next extra is called A Conversation with Director Peter Segal and Producer Brian Grazer. When I first started watching it I assumed it was another full commentary track. This is because the film plays along while they talk. However the whole thing stops (quite abruptly) after the first few chapters of the film. What’s there is very good though and it’s a shame they didn’t carry on through the whole film.
There’s a short deleted scene and an extension of the restaurant scene. The latter scene is over ten minutes long and is extremely funny and well worth watching. Makeup Application is a speeded up film that shows Eddie being made up into two of the Klump Characters.
Storyboards and Final Feature Comparison is a collection of four scenes with two windows, the storyboard shows in the first window and the final footage in the second. There are around two minutes of Outtakes, a Janet Jackson music video, a Theatrical Trailer and around 22 screens of Production Notes.
Finally there’s some Cast & Crew Bios, some Reel Recommendations and instructions on how to subscribe to the Universal DVD Newsletter. As you can see this is quite an extensive list of extras.
Overall
This isn’t really a bad comedy. Some of the scenes are hilarious, particularly the scenes involving the family together. Also the characters have their own subplots in the film and this gives them much more life. The problem for me was that in the moments between the funny scenes I found that there wasn’t enough there to stop my interest waning.
Technically it’s a very impressive feat. There’s a scene in particular when the family goes to a restaurant for dinner. The camera pans around everyone sat at the table and when you realise that nearly everyone there is Eddie Murphy you can’t help but be impressed.
Here’s another warning, be prepared to stretch your imagination when it comes to some of the science involved in the plot. I won’t say too much but you’ll know what I mean when you see it. Personally I thought this was excusable because after all this is only a comedy.
Apart from the family scenes that are always hilarious there’s one particular sequence that had me rocking. It’s a dream sequence that’s basically a spoof of Armageddon. I’ll say no more about it but for me it was the funniest part of the movie.
Negative comments aside I did enjoy this film. Its not as good as the first one and it’s definitely not as sophisticated. It holds up fairly well though and with the exception of being a little too long, I can recommend this film to fans of Eddy Murphy, particularly if you enjoyed the first Nutty Professor film.
As for the DVD itself, it has very good audio and video quality. It also has a very good selection of extras in particular the director’s commentary track and certainly justifies its Collectors Edition label.
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