When Kate (now a successful businesswoman) returns to town to save the local orphanage from being demolished by a shady developer (a plot point that feels secondary), Norbit is torn. He must find the courage to leave Rasputia, win back Kate, and save his home. The narrative is a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy, but the paint is made of crude latex and louder-than-life performances.
Ultimately, Norbit is not a good movie. It is not a so-bad-it’s-good movie. It is a so-wrong-it’s-fascinating movie. It stands as a testament to a particular moment in American comedy when the only rule was “make them laugh, no matter the collateral damage.” For some, it is an guilty pleasure; for others, an unwatchable relic. But for anyone interested in the limits of comedy, the weight of representation, and the spectacular, sweaty, latex-bound ambition of Eddie Murphy, Norbit is essential, uncomfortable viewing. It is a film you can’t defend, but you also can’t look away from.
To watch Norbit in 2025 is to experience a profound tonal whiplash. It is a film of undeniable, bizarre craftsmanship and relentless, puerile cruelty. It is both too mean to be sweet and too cartoonish to be truly dangerous. Eddie Murphy’s performance is a wonder of physical comedy and a monument to bad taste. Norbit -2007-
The humor of Norbit is the humor of a slapstick cartoon. People are hit with shovels, thrown through walls, and humiliated in elaborate set pieces. A running gag involves Rasputia’s brothers working as “pimps” in a failed waterbed store. There’s a scene where Norbit is forced to sing a love song to Rasputia in a crowded restaurant, only to be smashed in the face with a dessert tray.
More significantly, Norbit became a shorthand for cinematic offensiveness. In the years since, as conversations around body shaming, racial representation, and gendered stereotypes have evolved, the film has aged like milk left on a radiator. It is frequently cited in think pieces about “the last truly un-PC comedy.” It marks the end of an era where a major studio would hand $60 million to a star to play multiple offensive stereotypes, all in the service of a flimsy romantic plot. When Kate (now a successful businesswoman) returns to
Flash forward to adulthood. Norbit (Murphy, in a subdued, soft-spoken performance) is a meek, downtrodden accountant trapped in a loveless, terrifying marriage to Rasputia (Murphy in a fat suit and heavy prosthetics). Rasputia is a monstrous force of nature: loud, sexually aggressive, physically abusive, and profoundly entitled. She and her three hulking, dim-witted brothers (also played by Murphy, in an astonishing feat of multi-role chutzpah) run the town of Boiling Springs, Tennessee, with an iron, spandex-clad fist.
This is the last great gasp of Eddie Murphy’s “man of a thousand faces” era, a direct lineage from his Nutty Professor films. The technical achievement is undeniable. The problem is that he used his genius to create monsters, not characters. Where Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor had pathos and a gentle soul, Rasputia has only volume and menace. Ultimately, Norbit is not a good movie
The story is a bizarre, hyperactive spin on the classic “ugly duckling” and “childhood sweethearts” tropes. Orphaned as a baby, Norbit Albert Rice is left at the steps of the Golden Wonton Restaurant & Orphanage, run by the kindly, elderly Mr. Wong (Eddie Murphy in his first of three roles). There, he meets Kate (Thandie Newton), a sweet, pigtailed girl who promises to be his friend forever.