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Being Eddie, a new Netflix documentary on Eddie Murphy, isn’t his best movie. It isn’t his worst. It’s something to justify signing the 64-year-old to a $70m production deal in hopes that he might finally be moved to return to his standup comedy roots and deliver the long-anticipated follow-up to his seminal 1987 special Raw. With access to the subject and his archival material bought and paid for, Being Eddie is free to focus on other aspects of Murphy’s life, opening with indulgent shots of his gothic mansion and its retractable roof. While the camera gawks at the spoils of Murphy’s 40-plus year career, he remains at pains to tell viewers that his day-to-day routine isn’t much different from theirs: he goes to work, hangs out with his family and falls asleep to MTV’s Ridiculousness. He thinks it’s the funniest show on TV, in fact, and would much rather binge that blooper series (which he likens to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s avant-garde work) than reruns of his greatest hits.
That would be a bold confession to share even if it wasn’t coming from arguably the funniest person who has ever lived, and Being Eddie wastes no time in making Murphy’s claim to that title ironclad. For confirmation, director Angus Wall starts out by consulting with other recipients of major Netflix deals: Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld. It’s just hard to digest all this reverence for Murphy from comedians who have grown increasingly out touch and comfortable with punching down at marginalized groups.
Their hero worship comes as Murphy heaps praise on Muhammad Ali for giving rise to a foundational generation of high-achieving Black Americans that also includes Oprah, Michael Jordan and Barack Obama. More revealing moments follow when Murphy opens up about his troubled home life on Long Island (he lets slip that his first memory in life is of his parents fighting), the whiplash of going from hot comedian to smoldering sex symbol, and the media pitting him against Richard Pryor – a comic idol he actually got to direct in the star-studded caper comedy Harlem Nights.
Wall, the Oscar-winning editor behind The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, shows off some armchair psychology in Being Eddie. He gets Murphy to connect his habit of paying for the funeral arrangements of his famous friends (Redd Foxx, Rick James) to earlier troubles accepting the deaths of his father and stepfather, which generally resulted in an aversion to funerals. He didn’t attend the one for his brother the comedian Charlie Murphy, who died suddenly of leukemia in 2017.
Shrewdly, Being Eddie repurposes some of the less jokey outtakes from Charlie’s Chappelle Show storytimes to help round out the portrait of Eddie – who generally shrugs off those epic yarns about James and Prince as “just another night in my life”. Wall lets Murphy talk about diagnosing himself with obsessive-compulsive disorder – a comedic secret weapon that he credits with his great powers of observation. But Wall doesn’t challenge Murphy, at least not on camera, when Murphy claims to have cured himself with his incredible powers of self-restraint.
The documentary also leaves out other notable milestones in Murphy’s public life: the 1997 arrest of a trans prostitute who happened to be riding in his car during a traffic stop (the actor maintained he was just being a “good Samaritan”), his 14-day media-marriage to producer Tracey Edmonds, his initial rejection of the daughter he fathered with ex-Spice Girl Mel B. Most galling, the documentary makes a mountain of Murphy returning to SNL after he spurned the show for decades over jokes made at his expense without bringing anyone who was part of that episode then (David Spade) or now (Lorne Michaels) on to explain their side.
Murphy getting dissed by the show that made him a household name is presented as a career nadir in Being Eddie. But it’s difficult to accept that premise when even Murphy himself credits that moment for prompting him to change tack to projects such as Dreamgirls, which earned him an Oscar nomination (albeit one ultimately thwarted by his insistence on also doing the film Norbit); Shrek, one of the highest-grossing animation franchises of all time; and The Nutty Professor, which saw him raise the standard for costuming and character acting to an impossible height. It turns out Universal was so skeptical about his ability to play the supporting characters in the film that he was made to audition for each of the Klump family parts.
It isn’t until you near the end of Being Eddie’s 103 minutes that it becomes clear why Netflix would keep stalling. For a parting gift, the film-makers present Murphy with two ventriloquist dolls made to look like Pryor and Bill Cosby – a full-circle moment that sprang from Murphy riffing on what his standup act might look like if he were to return to the stage right now. Enough with the teasing, already. Just do it.
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Being Eddie is available now on Netflix
