Murphy lacks pulse, humor in 'Life'

Put Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence together and you would have the makings of a funny movie. Put Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence together, send them to prison, take an unsuccessful stab at mixing humor and heavy-handed drama and you have "Life." Combining comedy and drama is always a dicey proposition, and even more so here where the two leads are not exactly known for their dramatic chops.

As a movie, "Life" is lost - it has no direction and no point. Things get started when Ray Gibson (Murphy) and Claude Banks (Lawrence) cross paths at a late night club. They seem to be complete opposites - Gibson a shady pickpocket resigned to a life of crime and Banks an ambitious banker with his first day of work right around the corner. The two come together, however, as a result of money owed to the notorious Spanky Johnson (Rick James - yes that Rick James), and are soon headed to Mississ

Courtesy of Universal Pictures Martin Lawrence meets Bernie Mac while exchanging punchlines in prison in "Life."

ippi to pick up some liquor for the bootlegger.

While down South the guys run into some trouble and end up being convicted of a murder they didn't commit. Their sentence: life in prison. Up until this point the comedy is very slow and boring, and things fail to pick up once the guys go behind bars.

Ray and Claude pass the time in prison by bickering, planning escapes and tutoring a mute baseball prodigy. Neither Murphy nor Lawrence is able to squeeze much humor out of the prison sequences - sure there's a funny line here or there, but for the most part the story lags and lags. Another problem is that the punchline to one of the funniest bits in the entire movie was given away in the film's trailer.

Hurting things even more is director Ted Demme's tendency to blend goofy over-the-top humor with serious, hard-hitting moments. Several sequences during the characters' time in prison are heartbreaking, but they just don't fit into the context and end up coming off as silly. The worst of these is a long montage of shots from the prison that's intercut with footage of important moments from the '60s. Sure, it's a nice homage to the time period but it sticks out like a sore thumb in the middle of the movie. Demme seems to have been striving for a story about characters making the best out of a bad situation, but he falls far short of pulling it off.

Equally awful are the two leads. Teaming the two actors up may have seemed like an exceptional idea at some point, but it just doesn't work. The main problem is the weak script that puts the two performers behind from the start. The script is muddled and just not funny, which is criminal for something striving for comedy.

But all is not lost. Several of the actors who play prison inmates squeeze some humor out of the sappy script, including Michael "Bear" Taliferro as the fierce Goldmouth. Another impressive thing about the movie is its exceptional makeup work, which is used to show 60 years of aging on Lawrence and Murphy.

In the end, "Life" fails because it isn't funny and its story isn't compelling. Those behind the film, including producer Brian Grazer, would have been wise to take a look at Murphy's "The Nutty Professor," a movie that blended comedy and a serious story together for an enjoyable result. So, unless you want to spend what feels like a good hunk of your "Life" in a movie theater, pass on this unworthy flick.

04-19-99