MR.GUMBY TALKS DIRTY
Eddie Murphy's impersonation of Michael Jackson singing "She's Out Of My Life" isn't merely savagely accurate, and funny ("Tito, give me some tissue"), it's shrewd. Skewering Jackson, and the other singers in the bit, including mid-and-late period Elvis, Stevie Wonder (a long-winded Grammy acceptance speech) and James Brown (grunting unintelligible), sets up the terms of Murphy's fame: other comics aren't the competition, only pop stars.
MR.GUMBY TALKS DIRTY
EDDIE MURPHY Comedian
(Entertainment Company/CBS)
by
Mitchell Cohen
Eddie Murphy's impersonation of Michael Jackson singing "She's Out Of My Life" isn't merely savagely accurate, and funny ("Tito, give me some tissue"), it's shrewd. Skewering Jackson, and the other singers in the bit, including mid-and-late period Elvis, Stevie Wonder (a long-winded Grammy acceptance speech) and James Brown (grunting unintelligible), sets up the terms of Murphy's fame: other comics aren't the competition, only pop stars. His arrogance isn't all that presumptuous, since Murphy was on every magazine cover in '83 that Jackson wasn't —both,by year's end, had appeared in John Landis movies (a 1995 trivia question)—and since their dual ascendancies are due to a precocious mix of instinct, packaging and canny synthesis. In a rare moment of foresight years ago, this writer offered the theory that the guy who came along combining James Brown, Smokey Robinson and youthful sex appeal would rule the world. Jackson proved me right, but I'd never have extended the idea to imagine the impact of a comic who combined Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and y.s.a.