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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE Year: 1999 Rating: **** |
Eddie Murphy's final classic being COMING TO AMERICA is half true: it's his last quality vehicle that made a lot of money when in reality, the box-office disappointment LIFE has Murphy really proving himself within a quality central plot that, like his breakthrough 48 HRS., involves crime, prison, mixes comedy with drama and provides the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE star an equal partner... there in Nick Nolte, and here in Martin Lawrence...
Who Murphy was as much a standup comedy-mentor as Richard Pryor was to Murphy... the latter having starred in HARLEM NIGHTS that, like LIFE, takes place during the Depression-era... and one of the best moments includes what seems a homage to the Murphy-directed misfire when, trapped in the fence-less, gun-surrounding, rural-southern chain-gang workcamp, he and the entire group of eclectic underdog prisoners (all intriguing despite befitting every prison-flick trope from STIR CRAZY to SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) dream of partying in Murphy's would-be nightclub... a one-minute fantasy-sequence more entertaining than the entire NIGHTS...
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
Meanwhile, Murphy and Lawrence are balanced equally: Lawrence a naive dolt turned chagrined grouch while Murphy combines his street-savvy TRADING PLACES con-man persona with a deliberately overboard parody of a jiving fast-talker.. yet the true star is director Ted Demme, who helmed the underrated BEAUTIFUL GIRLS between his ode-to-GOODFELLAS cocaine opus BLOW (before ironically dying of a coke overdose himself)...
Beginning with a rum-running setup leading to a COMING TO AMERICA inspired old-man-makeup finale, this epic LIFE sentence is really a connected collection of vignettes... and none of them drag or are too dramatic to be funny, or too funny to lack the essential poignancy for the audience to forget — that these two extremely likable guys are in a tremendously dire situation.
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy tributes HARLEM KNIGHTS in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE with Nick Cassavetes
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| Nick Cassavetes in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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| Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in LIFE |
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