Undercover Brother (2002)

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Undercover Brother (2002)

Eddie Murphy should sue

Eddie Griffith plays Anton Jackson, the Undercover Brother, in this self conscious action comedy helmed by Malcolm D. Lee (The Best Man) and written by John Ridley (Three Kings, "Martin"). Undercover Brother is a hepster, stuck-in-the-seventies Black Power secret agent who gets tangled up in a white global conspiracy headed by "The Man" (yeah, we knew it all along) in order to keep a potential black candidate for president (Billy Dee Williams) away from power and mired in a fried chicken industry ("We do chicken right-on!"). Griffith can deliver laughs, especially when playing the bumbling yet somehow still efficient secret agent bit that Leslie Nielsen patented in The Naked Gun, but Ridley's ham-fisted script overdoes it by giving him (and the rest of an otherwise talented supporting cast) a string of good one-liners and trying to make them fit them together into a coherent ninety-minute movie. Undercover Brother is good for a few laughs--witness Conspiracy Brother (David Chappelle) ranting against the White Man keeping him down even as he sneaks joints and screws up. Witness also the rolled eyes when Griffith has to pass himself off as an Uncle Tom by eating a whitebread sandwich fairly oozing mayonaise, encouraged by his new white girlfriend (Penelope Snow), who likewise oozes sexuality. (Talk about disassociation therapy.)

Witness also how quickly these laughs die out, and leave us waiting in vain for the tired old jokes about "brothers" vs. "honkies" to fizzle out and deliver, if not something else, at least something with more substance than whiteboys not being able to sing or dance. Eddie Murphy's subtle digs into white America back in his SNL days (playing a black man disguised as a white man, infiltrating white America and finding everything from newspapers to bank loans thrown free into his lap) is exploited and completely sabotaged here. Murphy's routine didn't go more than ten or fifteen minutes. Undercover Brother stretches these gags out for over ninety. (Hint hint.) The trailer gives most of the laughs in a minute and a half. Stick with it instead.

-Long