Every Eddie Murphy Movie, Ranked
Updated January 2023 to add You People.
After a successful stand-up career in the 1970s and a wildly acclaimed run on Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s, Eddie Murphy launched his film career (while still on SNL) in 1982 and has been appearing on the big screen fairly steadily in the decades since, starring in over 40 titles. To date, Murphy's films have grossed over $6 billion worldwide, but only occasionally has the material on screen matched Murphy's comedic talents—and, even when it has, reviews have sometimes been less positive than you might expect. In the gallery above, we rank all of his films to date (including his newest, Coming 2 America) from worst to best by Metascore, which reflects the consensus of professional critics for each film.
The Shrek series stopped collecting critical acclaim after the second film, but the sequels continued to perform well at the box office, including over $800 million alone for this third chapter, released in 2007. Murphy once again plays Donkey, who aids Shrek in his attempt to get his young cousin-in-law Artie (series newcomer Justin Timberlake) installed on the throne. Critics saw a franchise that was running out of steam.
“There's no disguising the fact that Shrek the Third has come down with a bad case of sequelitis. You know the symptoms: Lots of razzle-dazzle to distract from the hole at the center of the story. You know, the place where fresh ideas should be.” —Peter Travers, Rolling Stone