Being Eddie Review: Sycophantic Portrait Of Eddie Murphy Is Too Self-Congratulatory To Be Interesting

Angus Wall’s adulatory portrait of Eddie Murphy is little more than an excessively long puff piece. Being Eddieelevates Murphy’s undeniable contributions to comedy while completely disregarding anything that might denigrate the enigmatic star. Wall’s film is Murphy’s fifth project with Netflix since 2019’s Dolemite Is My Name, around the time that he reportedly signed a $70 million deal to deliver new stand-up for the platform for the first time since his notorious special Raw, in 1987, making it difficult to see Being Eddie as anything but extended PR.

That’s not to say the film isn’t of value at all, but there’s a frustrating lack of complexity to the enterprise. In truly misleading fashion, the title suggests something far more intimate than what is delivered, with Murphy supplying the bulk of the talking-head reflections while his closest friends fill in the rest of the requisite flattery. One of Netflix’s other big-ticket stars, Dave Chappelle, labels himself the LeBron James to Eddie Murphy’s Michael Jordan.

To be sure, Murphy’s career is second to none, and there should be mountains of praise heaped on a comic who, as critic Elvis Mitchell points out, “changed the world,” alongside Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston. Murphy joined Saturday Night Live at only 19 years old, and rocketed to film stardom in 48 Hrs. at only 21, his first comedy special at 22, and was easily the most recognizable Black star of the 1980s. As the film is quick to point out, the careers of Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, and Kenan Mitchell are probably impossible without his trailblazing.

But, considering that Mitchell may be the only unbiased expert in this crop of interviewees, Being Eddie never escapes its confines. The film never considers the fullness of Raw’s cultural impact, which, for all of its undeniable charismatic, unprecedented humor, has also gone sour in many circles for its unbridled homophobia and sexism. Murphy’s long spate of commercial failures in the 1990s and 2010s are not examined, either, except offhandedly, and even recontextualized by Tracee Ellis Ross as reflections of Murphy’s committed service as a family man.

The film is hagiographic by omission. It isn’t that some of these analyses are necessarily wrong or invalid, but that Wall (or, more likely, Murphy himself) refuses to give us the full picture that a name like Being Eddie implies. Even when removed from the implications of his prolific career, there isn’t a ton here that gives us an unbridled look into the man’s inner life. Some mention is made here and there of Murphy’s reported struggles with OCD, his paranoia, and his rocky relationship with his parents (they were incessant fighters and his father was murdered by a lover when Murphy was only eight), but everything is kept coolly casual and surface-level.

Wall, who is a two-time Oscar-winning editor for The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, making his feature directorial debut, cannot avoid the pitfalls of Netflix’s spate of softball docs. The film really goes full-tilt advertorial in an extended segment about how great a father Murphy is. Perhaps he is, but it is strange that a documentary which purports to give us access into his life doesn’t mention that he has ten children from five women, one of whom he denied the existence of for many years. Nor is any mention made of Murphy’s arrest for soliciting sex work from trans worker Atisone Seiuli, who famously served 90 days in jail while Eddie went scot-free.

On the positive side, Wall does give us a solid birds-eye perspective on the comic whose career influence is truly hard to fathom. Murphy says that, as a young comic, he wanted to be as “funny as Pryor, cool as Elvis,” and “as famous as The Beatles.” And, for a long time, he was all those things. Murphy’s impressions and takes on Buckwheat, Gumby, and James Brown effectively ushered SNL into its current status as an immovable institution. His star turn in Beverly Hills Cop made him the most bankable Black actor since Sidney Poitier. His red leather jumpsuit donned for his special Delirium made him both a comic icon and a sex icon.

More understated in Murphy’s accomplishments is the way in which he used his clout to feature other Black artists in mainstream films like Boomerang and Harlem Nights (his lone directorial effort to date). Through archival footage, Wall and Murphy point out the racism of the 1980s and 90s media landscapes, which could not see his success outside the shadow of Richard Pryor, an implication that there is only one spot for any one Black comedian at any given time. A big studio romantic comedy, Boomerang, in particular, was received by many critics poorly in ways that only highlight a systemic refusal to see artists of color play in traditionally white spaces. Murphy called out racist practices at the Oscars in 1988, but the vindictive was never publicized.

But the person remains elusive. When discussing his turns in The Nutty Professor and Norbit, through which he transformed into nearly ten characters combined, Murphy expounds on his TV-obsessed childhood and how he marveled at the disappearing acts of actors behind monster makeup. Perhaps similarly, his mother used to joke about not knowing what Murphy’s voice sounded like, so frequent was his mimicry. These admissions suggest a man who has always been hiding, even when doing such extraordinary comic feats that have perhaps only been equaled by the likes of Jerry Lewis or Charlie Chaplin.

Perhaps the lack of penetration beyond the outer layers is purposeful. Perhaps this is an artist who, ironically, cannot be just Eddie. Or, perhaps, fame and fortune forge a protective barrier that is difficult to shed. Both Chapelle and Jerry Seinfeld marvel about Murphy’s stability considering his astronomical fame. Murphy attributes it to achieving, early on, an understanding of who he is and what he wanted to do. “I love myself,” he says. In contrast to so many stars, Murphy never did drugs or drank alcohol.

But John Landis, who replaced Richard Pryor with Eddie in Trading Places after the former notoriously burned himself while freebasing cocaine, puts it another way: “He was too vain to participate in his own destruction.” Murphy also seems too vain to be vulnerable, or else he thinks, erroneously, that vulnerability is a way to participate in that destruction. Either way, Murphy may never be just Eddie. At least not to us. And maybe that’s okay.