Boxoffice-March.1988

EDDIE MURPHY RAW
StatTing Eddie Muifhy
Produced by Robert D. Waehs and Keenen Ivory Wayans.
Directed by Robert Townsend Written by Eddie Murphy.
A Paramount Pictures release Comedy concert documentary,
rated R Running time: 91 min. Screening date: 12/18/87.
If our parents had not spent so much time telling us to
not talk dirty, would we be as rich as Eddie Murphy
right now? This inflammatory laugh riot grossed an
incredible $39 million in three weeks.
Eddie Murphy's brazen confidence and effortless media
domination too often work to obscure the fact that he is still
only 26 years old, an important fact to keep in mind, lest we
judge his state of mind too harshly at this stage of his
career.
Like Prince and Michael Jackson, two other wildly-talented,
wildly-successful black entertainers of his generation.
Murphy exhibits just enough strange behavior to give us
pause. Off screen, his well-docutnented worship of Elvis
Presley never fails to make us squirm with edginess. After
all, young comedians tend to disintegrate before our eyes
easily enough when they're not idolizing substance-abusing
burnouts.
FOR KEEPS
Starring Molly Ringivald, Randall Batinkoff, Kenneth Mars
and Minam Flynn
Produced by Jerry Belson and Walter Coblenz Directed by
John G Avildsen Written by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise
DeClue.
A Tri-Star Pictures release Comedy, rated R Running time:
98 min. Screening date: 1/8/88
The cinematic population explosion continues. However,
unlike "Three Men and a Baby" and "Baby Boom," "For
Keeps" makes its characters go through the messy inconvenience
of actually giving birth, and the result is a tnuch
richer, more affecting film than its predecessors.
But "Raw" proves conclusively that although Murphy may
be an obsessive, he is, at least, a gifted obsessive. If you're
put off by his facile concerns and rampant misogyny, you
must at least admire his ability to fascinate and amuse us
with as much.
He kicks off his first theatrical concert film by relating
how Bill Cosby, a man he had never met, phoned to berate
him for over-employing off-color language in his act. Not
only does Murphy mimic Cosby's tirade perfectly, he actually
comes to embody Cosby in all Cosby's brilliance and fnistration.
Five minutes into the routine, we momentarily forget
Murphy completely and subconsciously begin to accept
that it really is Cosby up there. We're not laughing at Murphy
doing Cosby, we're laughing at Cosby. I tell you, it's weird.
It's like hypnotism. And it's entertaining as all get-out.
Not only that, but five minutes later he's doing the same
thing with Richard Pryor. He becomes Pryor so long and so
flawlessly that for ten minutes it's like watching a wonderful
long-lost Richard Pryor documentary. Again, eerie. Yet brilliant.
"Raw" the film is very, very raw indeed, a document
gorged with monstrous helpings of bathroom humor, f- words
and sexual slandering. The precedents, or course, are Pryor's
concert movies, and Murphy certainly isn't going to set any
bad-taste precedents with that kind of competition.
What Murphy does, and does well, is elicit more laughs per
minute than either of Pryor's last two in-concert extravaganzas.
Not only is Murphy the motion picture industry's most
reliable cash-harvesting actor, he stands to emerge as one of
America's most engaging stand-up comedians.
"Eddie Murphy Raw" is
language. — ]im Kozak
rated R for its deluge of nasty
Darcy and Stan (Molly Ringwald and newcomer Randall
Batinkoff) are teenage sweethearts expecting an uneventful
final year of high school, until Darcy realizes that she's
expecting something else. Suddenly, their futures are completely
changed as they contemplate how to handle this
crisis. Darcy's mother favors abortion and Stan's parents
urge adoption, but the kids decide to keep the baby. They
move into their own apartinent and are faced with the additional
burden of supporting themselves. Once the baby
arrives, the complications increase as the bills mount up and
Darcy withdraws, refusing to take care of the newborn.
When Darcy discovers that Stan has given up a college
scholarship to stay with her and the baby, she tries to break
up their relationship in hopes that at least one of them can
have the future they had planned before the baby came
along. Only after much agony apart do the two of them
decide to get back together, get married, and figure out some
way to further their educations while also being parents.
"For Keeps" takes on the substantial challenge of making
teenaged pregnancy a suitable topic for a romantic comedy.
The film's success is due primarily to a sensitive cast and a
well-crafted screenplay by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise
DeClue. As in their previous collaboration, "About Last
Night," Kazurinsky and DeClue excel in presenting carefully
observed slices of life and infusing their fairly ordinary characters
with enough idiosyncrasies to ke(^p them from lapsing
into cliches. They also take pains to dramatize the seriousness
of Stan and Darcy's jilight, although the story's imabashedly
romantic entiing may still bring complaints ili.it
the hliii encourages teen pregnancy.
Ringwald continues to mature into a very fine ac:tress, and
she's supported well by this cast. Batinkoff's performance is
R-21 BOXOFFICF,