CULTURE CLASSICS - Boomerang - Creators For The Culture

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With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, this week in #CultureClassics we take a dive into one of The Culture’s best romantic comedies, Boomerang.

Boomerang is the 1992 comedy directed by Reginald Hudlin which stars Eddie Murphy as a hotshot advertising executive and insatiable womanizer. He then meets his new boss played by Robin Givens and discovers that she is essentially a female version of himself, and realizes he is receiving the same treatment from her that he delivers to others. Mix in another potential love interest in Halle Berry and love, hate, sex, and comedy ensue. The film also features talented creators for The Culture David Alan Grier, Martin Lawrence, Grace Jones, and Chris Rock.

Murphy assisted in developing the story with writers Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield, having worked with the writing duo since his days on Saturday Night Live and helped hire Hudlin to direct the film following Huldin’s success with his debut film (and another certified #CultureClassic) House Party. And what they all created was something different from the comedies Murphy was doing at the time and a game-changer for romantic comedies in general. With classics scenes like Murphy’s biz meeting/dates with Grace Jones and Eartha Kitt, and Clearance Weatherspoon’s explicit advice on relationship dynamics, Boomerang brought raunchy, R-rated comedies to the masses something Hollywood likes to think was invited by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan. It was a massive success critically and commercially to boot and was the 18th highest-grossing film in North America in 1992 earning over $131 million worldwide during its theatrical run.

And like most major motion pictures coming from The Culture at the time, the soundtrack was a banger too with “L. A.” Reid and “Babyface” overseeing it. Stealing a line from the movie Babyface wrote “Love Shoulda Brought You Home”. Toni Braxton sang the demo as she was a complete unknown at the time but she killed it and the rest became history. The album reached the number 4 spot on the Billboard 200, and number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and also included several other singles that charted in their own right, the most successful being Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road”, which went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and stayed there for thirteen weeks, breaking Elvis Presley’s previous record of eleven weeks with his song “Hound Dog”.

Boomerang was a hit, made rated R comedies mainstream, and debuted both Halle Berry and Toni Braxton. A true Culture Classic indeed.

#FunFact: (SPOILER) The scene in which MURPHY changes his mind while with Robin Givens and finally chooses Halle Berry for good was a major rewrite to the script. In the original draft, Eddie’s character Marcus never decides anything, things are decided for him by the different women. So finally Hudlin and the writers realized he had to make an affirmative choice and what you see at the end of the film was the result.