Being Eddie directed by Angus Wall on Netflix

I recently watched Being Eddie, the 2025 biographical documentary streaming on Netflix, directed by Angus Wall, and it captures one of my favorite film actors of all time. The film chronicles the life, rise, and long career of Eddie Murphy, a once-in-a-generation comedic force whose presence on camera helped define an era of American entertainment.

At its core, Being Eddie is an interesting look into celebrity. Not just fame, but the machinery around it, the mythology of it, and the toll it takes on the person inside the image. The documentary revisits Eddie Murphy’s meteoric ascent from a teenage stand-up comic performing in New York clubs at 17, to joining Saturday Night Live straight out of high school, to becoming a comedy supernova and eventually a Hollywood icon spanning nearly five decades.

The film is full of highs and lows. Structurally, it is not a particularly strong story. But the celebrity of Eddie Murphy is deep enough, rich enough, and culturally important enough that you want to keep watching. His experiences, his moments in the limelight, his purity as an entertainer, his laugh, his smile, and his inspirations, particularly Richard Pryor, are fascinating to revisit. The highlights of his time on Saturday Night Live, and the momentum that carried him directly into film, remind you how miraculous the rise of someone like Eddie really was.

I, too, dreamed of becoming famous. As a case study, I’m always amazed by the people who actually make it. They seem to possess something internal and undefinable. Maybe it’s the command of the camera. Maybe it’s the control of an audience. Maybe it’s timing. Most likely, it’s all three. Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America stand out as moments where those elements aligned perfectly. Eddie had total command, and he became one of the first Black men to truly cross into what Hollywood long considered a “white world,” whether we like that phrasing or not.

The documentary features candid interviews with Eddie Murphy himself, along with reflections from peers and collaborators including Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Jerry Seinfeld, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Brian Grazer. These voices reinforce his influence across generations and genres, from comedy and action to animation and drama. There is no denying his legacy.

Where the film loses me is in its narrative framing of struggle.

The one piece I strongly criticize is that Eddie Murphy leans into a familiar posture I see repeated across many modern celebrity documentaries. The insistence on casting every hardship through the lens of racial grievance, and then projecting that struggle outward as if it belongs to all of us to carry the blame for. For a Black man to reach Eddie’s level of global fame requires breaking through an oligarchy of wealth and power. That same oligarchy exists for everyone. While Black Americans historically faced greater barriers, which is undeniable, the narrative that contemporary society is still collectively holding black people back feels increasingly disconnected from lived reality.

At times, the film feels like it loses the plot.

Racism is real. It affects people differently. It sucks at some level for everybody. But the repetition of grievance without resolution, without recognition of progress, and without grounding in the present, begins to feel less like illumination and more like division. It fuels a cycle of villainization and victimhood that we seem unable to exit.

Structurally, Being Eddie also struggles with pacing. Too much time is spent inside Eddie’s high-end home, which creates emotional distance rather than intimacy. He feels distant and untouchable. Historically, what made Eddie Murphy so attractive was how relatable and accessible he felt. Here, he sometimes feels like he’s performing himself rather than revealing himself.

There is also a lack of archival depth. Films like Arnold succeed because they dig deeper, allowing raw material to speak for itself. Being Eddie feels warmer, more polished, and more celebratory, but also safer than it should be. Eddie occasionally feels like he’s putting on airs, and that distance dulls the emotional impact.

And yet, I loved it. And I hated it.

I love Eddie Murphy. He is incredibly talented. He deserves an Oscar. I also feel exhausted by the same narrative being woven again and again in project after project. In some ways, Eddie has become a version of what he once pushed against. That may be the cost of success. Or the cost of survival inside fame.

The closure to identity politics and the so-called color wars is not an endless rehashing of pain. It is acknowledging how far we’ve come while still demanding better. Without that balance, we remain trapped in cycles of resentment rather than progress.

Eddie, you’re better than this.

Being Eddie is warm, nostalgic, celebratory, and often very funny. It is also flawed, distant, and at times frustrating. That tension may be honest. Or it may be avoidance.

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