27
Metascore
26 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 50Austin ChronicleSteve DavisAustin ChronicleSteve DavisThe fun in Norbit is watching Murphy at work – the guy has a knack for bringing the physicality of his comic characters to life.
- 40The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottNot exactly uproarious. But Mr. Murphy, going back at least to his Gumby and Buckwheat days on "Saturday Night Live," has always had the ability to turn broad caricature into something stranger and more inventive.
- 30Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonMuch of the movie -- which Murphy wrote with a small posse of collaborators -- is taken up with the torturously dull, not to mention unbelievable, romance between Norbit and Kate (a disappointingly lackluster Newton) and the tedious agenda of Cuba Gooding Jr. as a schemer-manipulator.
- 25Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanMurphy speaks in a breathy lisp, as if his mouth had been partially buttoned shut, and he doesn't give himself the nerd's traditional redeeming feature of a geeky, slide-rule intellect. Norbit, all frozen gawk, is just a very dim bulb.
- 25New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanIt's hard to know who is the intended audience for this misguided mess.
- 20The Hollywood ReporterLuke SaderThe Hollywood ReporterLuke SaderRacially insensitive, politically incorrect and beyond crude.
- Murphy and his brother Charlie, who collaborated on the screenplay, seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from the latter's stint on "Chappelle's Show." Where Dave Chappelle used stereotypes to confront prejudice, the Murphys (and their co-screenwriters Jay Scherick and David Ronn) merely squeeze a few grudging drops from caricatures that were wrung dry in the age of vaudeville.
- 10L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyIt's an astonishingly crass and vulgar film, crudely directed on a cut-rate budget by Brian Robbins, never more than almost funny or less than disturbing.
- 0Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean AxmakerSeattle Post-IntelligencerSean AxmakerIt's recidivist Murphy: bad-skit comedy populated by caricatures in search of a movie.