The Distinguished Gentleman (1992)

The Distinguished Gentleman (1992)

5/10

Starring

Eddie Murphy

Lane Smith

Sheryl Lee Ralph

Joe Don Baker

Victoria Rowell

Directed by Jonathan Lynn

In this movie, Eddie Murphy plays a conman who cons his way through life and then find his way into congress. Putting aside the fictitious script and just taking an aim at the comedy, I have to say it is very light. It seemed the whole idea of trying to sell a conman being sharp, and having a funny side outweighed the idea of making the script entertaining as a comedy along the way.

Many times the comedy were just not strong enough to get a laugh out of you, but the movie itself was good enough to make you want to see it through to the end. That is the good thing about this movie, it plucks at your curiosity. But the movie was supposed to be a comedy, and for that reason this movie was not well received as a comedy and didn’t pull any weight in the box office.

Now here is the gist, Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) is a conman and he gets this done with his crew. He has been at this for years and it so happens that the congressman of his district a man named, Jefferson Johnson same name as his died in office, while having an affair.

Thomas happened to have overheard a lot of the money being thrown around in politics during one of his con and he decided to use his name as a gift.

He knew many people just vote the name they are used to without even checking to see who it is, so he decided to run for congress as an independent. He won by the technicality of his name and now all he wants is to steal and con as much money as he can.

That plan would have been easy if he knew what he was doing and how to get things done there. He was lucky to run into other congressmen who have been doing this for years. They were willing to take him under their wing as long as they have him on their side.

Thomas soon found out that stealing from the people he is supposed to serve was not easy as he is faced with a challenge. Will he stand up for his constituent and go after his new friends or will he just play ball?

Well I’m pretty sure you can guess what he did, but the how he did it was what the movie was about. Even though the ideas were far-fetched and could not fly in the real world, but it was fun to see.

Eddie Murphy and his costars did a good job to keep me interested to see how things will end, but they failed to make me laugh.