Usually, it takes six or so months for an actor to parlay a Best Supporting Actor nomination into a cringe-worthy career-derailing performance in an unbelievably awful picture.  But presumptive Oscar winner Eddie Murphy is a groundbreaker.  The Dreamgirls star is shaving so much time from the aforementioned adjustment period, his next movie is coming out before he actually wins the award.  To make his revolutionary technique more obvious, Cuba Gooding, Jr. has been cast alongside Murphy (and if you listen very closely, you can hear Tommy Lee Jones and Haing S. Ngor singing backup during the closing credits in a delightful song about who has the worst skin).

Norbit isn’t quite that bad, but it’s a really, really long way from being even remotely good.  In the movie, Murphy combines America’s two greatest cinematic loves: Black comedians dressing up as morbidly obese women; and Murphy portraying multiple characters in a single film.  We just can’t get enough of either of those things.  They’re like Funyons, right down to that holy-shit-I-think-I’m-going-to-puke feeling you get after exposing yourself to them.

Murphy plays both the titular Norbit and his overweight, overbearing wife Rasputia (as well as Norbit’s adopted father, Mr. Wong, who seems remarkably similar to Murphy’s “old Jewish guy” character).  Thandie Newton plays the frighteningly skeletal girl Norbit wants to leave Rasputia for, and you’ll play either the person howling with laughter, or the person wondering about the level of retardation attendant to the people howling with laughter.  I think Norbit would have been a lot less grating if Rasputia was toned down by about 50%, as it was hard to gather any kind of sympathy for her henpecked husband due to the overall cartoonishness of her antics.  PSB says 4

Hannibal Rising begins in 1944 Lithuania, where Russian and German troops square off, literally, in the backyard of the young Hannibal Lecter (Aaron Thomas, and then A Very Long Engagement’s Gaspard Ulliel.  It’s a long winter, and there is nothing to eat, so why treat yourself to a little Sister Jerky?  That’s what the bloodthirsty Germans (led by Rhys Ifans) think, leaving viewers in the dark about how little Hannibal managed to survive on an empty stomach.

That’s the biggest problem with Rising: Thinking anyone will be dumb enough not to see through the big “surprise” at the end.  Viewers who suffer through the desperately boring two hours that precede this un-startling revelation deserve more, as does the legacy of the now laughably ridiculous Lecter, who, as a character, is more successful being spoofed in cartoons than he is in historical dramas meant to shed light on his ghastly upbringing.  Bet you didn’t think it would involve Gong Li, did you?  Or The Wire’s Dominic West as a French police detective?  Complete and utter bullshit from director Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and Thomas Harris, who makes his screenwriting debut by adapting his own poorly-received novel for the big screen.  PSB says 3