The fun in Norbit is watching Murphy at work – the guy has a knack for bringing the physicality of his comic characters to life.

Not exactly uproarious. But Mr. Murphy, going back at least to his Gumby and Buckwheat days on "Saturday Night Live," has always had the ability to turn broad caricature into something stranger and more inventive.

Much of the movie -- which Murphy wrote with a small posse of collaborators -- is taken up with the torturously dull, not to mention unbelievable, romance between Norbit and Kate (a disappointingly lackluster Newton) and the tedious agenda of Cuba Gooding Jr. as a schemer-manipulator.

Murphy speaks in a breathy lisp, as if his mouth had been partially buttoned shut, and he doesn't give himself the nerd's traditional redeeming feature of a geeky, slide-rule intellect. Norbit, all frozen gawk, is just a very dim bulb.

It's hard to know who is the intended audience for this misguided mess.