Calum Gilchrist
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Review A Day: Norbit
In the same vein as last year I’m going to try to do something productive, this year I thought that I would try to write movie reviews for EVERY film that I watch, which should be interesting as I’ve always liked writing reviews even though I’m not particularly good at it or even at all, I just enjoy putting my thoughts online.
Well that’s the idea so here’s the review of the first film I’ve seen this year: Norbit
I just uploaded the review here as I’m still figuring out the format and where to host it, I also should really finish editing the last few of the Photos of the Day as I quite liked a few of them, oh well, back to the review.
3 Jan 2011 1:03 AM
Norbit
Well, I’m glad to say that the first film I’ve seen this year was Norbit. Great way to start the year knowing that it can only improve from here on in. To be honest I only saw the latter half of the film as we just changed the channel after watching a Billy Connely DVD. It was a lovely contrast between one of the greatest comedians ever and Norbit. Now from what I can gather of Norbit from the small amount that I saw I will try to summarise. Eddie Murphy plays almost every character just like in Nutty Professor but the Nutty Professor was funny. It was stupid but it had this great novelty about it. Back to where I was, sorry. Norbit is about a guy of the same name as the title who gets married to a rather large woman named Rasputia, which I guess was some weird reference to Rasputin. Norbit is not happy with his marriage and out of the blue his childhood sweetheart appears and she, although engaged falls in love with the nerdy, shy Norbit (very original writing here). Even though I really disliked this film, I’m going to keep it spoiler free although I’m sure that anyone that’s ever seen a film can probably figure out the outcome.
Norbit seemed like a decent character, although terribly over done. The nerdy looking kid that gets bullied into a relationship because he doesn’t think he’s good enough, but his essence wins him the love of his life. It’s not a new story, nor did it bring anything new to the table. I will say bluntly that I think I laughed once and that was at a joke my Dad made that had no connection to the film. I really did not enjoy anything of what I saw. A retired pimp talking about love and trying to sell food to people sounds fine written down but I don’t think it was presented very well. It was ridiculous as that would never be tolerated at a wedding ceremony, which is where this strange speech was made.
One small editing thing I didn’t like was the use of a pop song for 10 seconds as Norbit rode a bicycle, then it cut. The music then continued from where it left of a few scenes down the line, which was a bit jarring and wasn’t executed very well. My last problem was the terrible effects at the end where Rasputia was sped up WITH motion blur running around the town. It was rather corny and felt really out of place in this film that seemed to be trying some sense of realism, oh wait there was a talking dog…
I won’t give it a rating because I didn’t see it from start to finish but I’m sure it would not change my opinion in any way.
