It may be too late and it may be a futile notion, but it’s time for all good people to rise up and band together in order to stop Eddie Murphy from winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. If anyone wants to launch a website to help amplify this feeling and (who knows?) maybe trigger a turnaround of opinion, I’ll contribute $100 bucks…seriously. He’s the one bad guy in the bunch who, I feel, really doesn’t deserve to win. Surely others feel this way?

I’ve seen that bored-indifferent, man-am-I-rich, leave-me-alone look on Murphy’s face too many times, and I’d be tickled if the Oscar camera could catch him scowling when Mark Wahlberg or Alan Arkin win instead. He may have the Oscar in the bag, but I keep hearing he’s not very well liked in the industry and that he’s regarded as a bit of an asshole. Plus he was too cool to show up for any one of those three swanky Dreamgirls press events that Terry Press threw last year. It’ll just take a little blogosphere surge to make it happen…maybe. Or maybe not.
I respect Murphy, and I certainly don’t hate him . I used to love him in the early to mid ’80s. I relished his spirited voice-acting in the two Shrek films, he was inspired in Bowfinger, and pretty funny in both Nutty Professor fims (especially the second one), but there’s that air of arrogance and impudence that rubs me the wrong way. Plus I can’t get over that run of truly awful big-studio films he made from the mid ’80s to the late ’90s.
Murphy needs to be leaned over a barrel for making Doctor Dolittle, Metro, Vampire in Brooklyn, Beverly Hills Cop III, The Distinguished Gentleman, Boomerang, Another 48 Hrs., Harlem Nights (hated it!), Coming to America (really hated it!), Beverly Hills Cop II (nowhere near as good as the original) and The Golden Child. 11 depressing films! I went through hell watching them.
I’m willing to let this go. If Murphy wins, whatever. He’s pretty good as James “Thunder” Early, especially during his on-stage performing scenes. But he really isn’t great or phenomenal in the part, and there isn’t much of a character arc. In the third act Jamie Foxx dismisses a song idea, then he does a line of something, and the next scene he’s dead…offscreen. Nor is there a whole lot of depth to the guy, and there’s very little connective tissue in his story. It’s an extended cameo, really.