There are stretches in a career that only make sense in hindsight. For Eddie Murphy, the late 1990s was one of the good ones. In the span of roughly five years, he headlined The Nutty Professor and Dr. Dolittle, delivered a quietly brilliant performance in the underseen Bowfinger, and lent his voice to a character in Shrek that would go on to outlast nearly everything else he made that decade. It was a run that reminded Hollywood exactly what Murphy was capable of when the material met his energy.
Then 2002 arrived and the momentum stalled. Murphy appeared in two films that year and neither landed. One became one of the most notorious box office disasters in studio history. The other was Showtime, a Warner Bros. buddy cop comedy that earned harsh reviews and failed to recoup its production budget. Taken together, the two films marked the beginning of a difficult chapter for one of the most naturally gifted comedic performers of his generation.
What Showtime actually is
The film pairs Murphy with Robert De Niro in a setup that sounds better on paper than it plays on screen. De Niro plays Mitch Preston, a rigid LAPD detective who destroys a news camera during a drug operation gone wrong and is subsequently ordered to participate in a police reality television show to avoid legal consequences. Murphy plays Trey Sellars, a patrol officer with outsized acting ambitions who has failed the department’s investigator program multiple times and sees the show as his long-awaited break.
The dynamic is classic odd-couple territory. Preston resents every second of the arrangement. Sellars embraces it completely. A producer played by Rene Russo shapes the two into reluctant television personalities, and the show even takes its name from one of Sellars’ catchphrases.
Showtime was directed by Tom Dey, whose previous film Shanghai Noon had paired two mismatched leads to reasonably crowd-pleasing effect. That film worked. This one, critics largely agreed, did not.
Where Murphy shines and where the film doesn’t
What the negative reviews missed, or at least underweighted, is that Murphy is genuinely fun to watch here. His Sellars is loose, self-amused and committed in a way that elevates scenes the script does not quite earn. When Sellars takes to the reality show format with obvious delight, excelling at everything from kicking doors open to leaping onto car hoods with exaggerated flair, Murphy brings a physical energy that feels authentic rather than forced.
De Niro’s deadpan resistance functions well as a comedic foil, even if the film never fully unlocks the chemistry between them. The two are funny in isolated moments without ever quite becoming a great screen pair.
William Shatner and the film’s best stretch
The most entertaining section of Showtime belongs to William Shatner, who arrives as a celebrity consultant hired to teach the two officers how to behave like television cops. Shatner draws on his experience playing a police sergeant in the procedural drama T.J. Hooker and commits to the bit with obvious enthusiasm. He is clearly enjoying himself, and that enjoyment is infectious in a way that briefly lifts the entire film.
Watching Murphy’s Sellars thrive under Shatner’s coaching while De Niro’s Preston suffers through it with barely concealed contempt is the closest Showtime gets to the comic rhythm it was clearly reaching for throughout.
A misfire worth a second look
Showtime earned just under $78 million against an $85 million budget and left critics largely cold. Seen now through a streaming lens, it plays as a product of its era, formulaic and uneven but not without charm. The pacing is looser than modern audiences expect and the stakes never feel particularly high. But there is something almost refreshing about a studio comedy that commits to being exactly what it is without overreaching.
For Murphy specifically, Showtime is a reminder of how much his presence can carry even when everything around him is operating below its potential. It did not save his 2002 and it did not restore his momentum. But it is not the disaster its reputation implies, and Murphy, as usual, gives it more than it probably deserved.
