re: Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, Trading Places, 48 hrs...

To paraphrase Patton Oswalt, he's funny in a who gives a shite kind of way. Murphy never had a real point of view like most great standups, he was just a guy who stood up and told jokes. He's kind of a throwback to the era before Lenny Bruce. Outside of his skin color, he would have fit in with the old Catskills circuit comics. Murphy was always a guy who viewed standup as a vehicle to become famous and move on to other things. He wasn't a devoted student of the craft like Pryor or Carlin, who cared more about standup than anything else.

This isn't to dog him, and I'm coming off harsher than I mean to. He was really funny. But I think he was always on tier below the greats because he was just a joke machine and not someone with a "voice". I don't think he cared about standup, he cared more about getting to Hollywood, and I think it showed.