Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)

The story picks up with Professor Sherman Klump working on a youth serum in his lab. However he is still plagued by Buddy Love's voice in his head and is trying to develop a relationship with Denise (Janet Jackson). He decides to remove the gene that "is" Buddy Love however this not only causes his brain cells to die off but also releases Buddy back into the world. With a drug company offering $150,000000 for proof of the youth serum, Buddy plans to get hold of the only serum available.

This is a sequel to the Nutty Professor and has the promise to be better because it has a greater focus on one of the funniest elements of the first film - the Klump family (all played by Murphy). However it isn't as good as the first one by a long shot, mainly because it tries to hard to set up as many jokes as possible. For example Buddy Love can't just be recreated - he's mixed with a dog to set up later jokes. It just seems like there's too much going on.

Unfortunately this desire to cram as much in as possible takes away from the comedy. Where the family were hilarious in small doses in the first film, here they are given too much story, too much detail for most of the jokes too work. Even the granny is less funny because she is stretched so thin. The plot is even more trivial than in the first film, but with more strands to it and less laughs it is more noticeable. This takes the comedy of the first (which was never Noel Coward) and makes it even grosser - basically if you find the idea of a giant hamster performing anal sex on a man funny then you'll probably love this.

There are plenty of funny bits (the Cape Fear spoof, some of the family segments) but the amount of plot they tried to cram in really kills the comedy. On the whole though you feel that this misses most of the potential jokes rather than hits them. Eddie Murphy is great in all his roles (although Love and Granny both seem more over the top and forced), Miller is funny as the unfortunate Dean but Janet Jackson is a real weak link as the love interest. It makes you realise how good (and sexy) Jada Pinkett was in the first movie.

This had the potential to be funny - by merely repeating the first film with a slightly different plot. But by making the comedy more gross-out and trying to make all the supporting characters into joint leads this is nowhere near as funny as you want it to be.