The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps

The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps is a 2000 family film produced by Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment. It once again stars Eddie Murphy playing Sherman Klump and his family. However, the sequel was not impressive with critics, calling it "unfunny" and "lowbrow". But it still did gain money at the box office.
==Plot ==
Sherman Klump is working on a new miracle formula– this time, the fountain of youth. He is also preparing to marry a fellow scientist and girlfriend, Denise Gaines (Janet Jackson). Unfortunately, he has started suffering from personality lapses that are threatening to alienate his bride-to-be: against his will, he acts like the obnoxious Buddy Love of the first film. After a particularly unpleasant incident, Sherman goes to his lab to analyze his DNA and locates Buddy Love's DNA in an abnormal gene. He decides to use Denise's genetic research methods to isolate the gene and permanently extract Buddy Love's DNA from his own. His assistant, Jason, tries to stop him, warning him that he might damage his health or even lose his intelligence. Sherman disregards the warning and, alone in his lab late at night, extracts Buddy's DNA.
The orphaned DNA, a glowing blob of jelly, combines with a hair from a basset hound named Buster and grows spontaneously into an adult man, Buddy Love—now a fully autonomous being. Thanks to his doggy heritage, however, this Buddy Love has a tendency to chase cats and cars. Sherman, meanwhile, has inflicted so much genetic damage on himself by removing Buddy that his brain cells begin dying at an exponential rate.
Meanwhile Cleetus, who has now retired from his job in the construction industry, takes a swig of Sherman's new formula, which Sherman hid in the garage earlier, and becomes a man in his late 20s, goes to a club and ends up in a fight with an older man named Willie. Buddy, who had an unsuccessful deal with Leanne Gillford, notices this fight when Cleetus turns back into his old self.
Buddy breaks into the Klump's house and steals some of Sherman's youth formula, planning to sell it to the highest bidder, then adds a household chemical to the remainder of the mixture. But Granny catches him, and thinks he is the stripper that was ordered for Denise's bachelorette party. Granny then strips and tongue-kisses Buddy. When Sherman administers the adulterated potion to a hamster in front of a large audience, the hamster, Petey, grows to enormous size. The Dean (Miller) hides from Petey under a fur coat, which the hamster sees as a female hamster named Molly, who already escaped the potion. Petey performs a lewd act (offscreen) on the Dean. After the fiasco, the deeply traumatized Dean fires Sherman. However, this is the least of Sherman's problems; his brain damage is now reaching a critical level. With the help of his loyal lab assistant, Jason, he devises a strategy to restore his mind. He plans to reintegrate Buddy into his DNA by reverting him back to the jelly-like matter he used to be, then sucking him up through a straw.
Sherman concocts a new, stronger youth formula when he is interrupted by Dean Richmond, demanding to know what Sherman's playing at. Richmond explains Buddy Love is selling the youth formula to a rival company, and believes Sherman to be in on it. Sherman gets a tennis ball, and heads with Dean Richmond to the office where Buddy is pitching the youth formula he stole; if he can revert Buddy to an infantile state and consume him, the return of Buddy's DNA to his own system will repair the damage that he originally caused. When Sherman arrives Buddy laughs, but Sherman then throws the tennis ball, and Buddy's dog genes compel him to give chase. Sherman has coated the ball with his new, super potent youth formula, and when Buddy catches the ball, he turns into a toddler. He runs off, then melts into a gelatinous blob that continues fleeing. However, Buddy suffers many injuries while in his blob form which soon kills him. He is run over by a car, thrown into the air making a hard landing, and is trampled in a large crowd of people. Buddy, in critical condition, before taking his last breath, he tells Sherman "Let's see how long you last without me". He dies and evaporates into a public coin fountain. But unfortunately, for Sherman, he can no longer get back inside of him.
Denise and Cletus arrive, and see Sherman and Richmond. Sherman, before his brain becomes seriously damaged, sadly tells Denise, whom he no longer recognizes, that he no smart, never, no more. Denise starts crying, and one of her tears lands on Buddy's DNA blob, causing it to trickle into the fountain. As his companions begin to usher him away, Denise promising to take care of him, Sherman turns and mumbles something about "pretty water". They see the fountain's water glowing a bright neon blue. Buddy is dead but his DNA is still alive in the water. She and Cletus force Sherman to drink the water before the DNA disperses, and he rapidly regains his mental faculties. In the last scene, Sherman and Denise get married.
==Cast==
*Eddie Murphy as The Klumps
*Janet Jackson as Denise Gaines.
*Larry Miller as Dean Richmond
*John Ales as Jason
*Richard Gant as Mr. Gaines
*Anna Maria Horsford as Mrs. Gaines
*Melinda McGraw as Leanne Guilford
*Jamal Mixon as Ernie Klump Jr.
*Wanda Sykes as Chantal
*Freda Payne as Claudine
*Nikki Cox as Miss Stamos (Credited as Bright Student)
*Chris Elliott as Restaurant Manager
*Earl Boen as Dr. Knoll
*Charles Napier as Four Star General
*Frank Welker as Petey
== Reception ==
=== Box office ===
Nutty Professor II: The Klumps grossed $42.5 million in its opening weekend, beating out Thomas and the Magic Railroad and What Lies Beneath to reach the number one spot. At the time, it had the highest opening weekend for an Eddie Murphy film, breaking the record formerly held by Dr. Dolittle. This also made it the third-highest opening weekend for any 2000 film, behind X-Men and Mission: Impossible 2. For its second weekend, it fell into second place behind Hollow Man with $18 million. The film went on to generate a total gross of over $123.3 million in the United States. It earned an additional $43 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $166.3 million worldwide.
=== Critical response ===
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 27% and an average rating of 4.5/10, based on reviews from 89 critics. The site's consensus states that "While Eddie Murphy is still hilarious as the entire Klump family, the movie falls apart because of uneven pacing, a poor script, and skits that rely on being gross rather than funny." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 38 out of 100, a score that indicates generally unfavorable reviews, based on reviews from 34 critics. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on a scale of A+ to F.
Salon.com's reviewer gave the movie one of its few positive notices, and offered the praise "cheerfully vulgar". The New Yorker's Anthony Lane was particularly severe; in addition to hating the film, he dismissed Murphy's playing of multiple characters as "minstrelling", and charged the actor with "at once feeding us what we like and despising us for swallowing it."
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars, noting that while it was "raucous" and "scatological," the film overall proved to be "very funny" and "never less than amazing." Variety's Joe Leydon wrote: "Be prepared to laugh less at a lot more of the same thing in this overbearing but underwhelming sequel."
In the UK, the BBC's Ceefax service gave the film a mixed review. Remarked the unnamed critic who reviewed the film for the teletext service:This sequel is disappointing and inferior to the 1996 original, but it still provides exuberant fun. The effects are so seamless and Eddie Murphy's performances as the Klumps so distinct from one another, that you really do forget it's all one actor. Janet Jackson will never be a great actress, but she pulls off her role with natural skill, something Madonna lacks to an embarrassing degree. The film's weakness is in its failure to fully realise the potential of some of its own best jokes. A restaurant scene mostly misfires simply because a lot of the dialogue is incomprehensible and the characters all talk over each other. In the original, Buddy Love was funny and charismatic. Here, he's a loud irritant, so it's just as well that the film focuses on the other Klumps.
==Theatrical Trailer==
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Category:2000 films
Category:Family
Category:Fantasy
Category:Children
Category:Comedy
Category:Adventure
Category:Action
Category:Films
Category:Films directed by Peter Segal
Category:Sequels
Category:The Nutty Professor films
Category:Universal Pictures films
Category:Imagine Entertainment films
Category:2000s films
Category:Rated PG-13
Category:Films starring Eddie Murphy
Category:Eddie Murphy films
Category:Films starring Wanda Sykes
Category:Films starring Larry Miller
Category:Films starring John Ales