"Meet Dave" continues Eddie Murphy's rocky relationship with gay audiences

A new "family comedy" from Eddie Murphy called Meet Dave opens today, and there appears to be some gay content in it.

Unfortunately.

In the film, an alien spaceship (in the form of Eddie) lands on Earth, controlled by tiny people inside who try to learn more about our world. According to this review:

"As the Captain attempts to familiarize himself with human culture, Meet Dave dabbles in racial and sexual stereotyping. When a headset pipes rap music into Dave, the miniature white aliens can't stand it. But a miniature black alien starts grooving to it. When Dave accidentally walks into a stage production of A Chorus Line, it turns the no-nonsense alien security officer (Pat Kilbane) into a lisping gay hairdresser."

Oh jeez, and this is supposed to be a PG rated "family comedy"? Well, I guess nothing brings a family closer together than laughing at mincing gay stereotypes, right? (and btw...A Chorus Line turned him gay? What would have happened if he had seen Xanadu?)

Of course, I wasn't going to see Meet Dave anyway, because it looks just terrible. But in all honesty, I've only seen a handful of Eddie Murphy movies.

The last one I saw was the infamous Razzie favorite Norbit, because I was ... curious. This was the film that supposedly lost Eddie the Oscar for Dreamgirls (the ads came out at the same time Oscar voting was going on, and rumour has it that Academy members took one look at the ads and cast their votes elsewhere). So i watched Norbit, and was not disappointed, as it was mesmerizingly awful.

But my Eddie movie-watching experiences are few and far between, and it's not only because his films generally stink.

I remember the first (and only) time I saw any of his stand-up act. I was twelve years old, and just coming to terms with my sexuality. I was at a birthday party for a friend, and someone put a copy of Eddie Murphy: Delirious in the VCR. the first lines out Eddie's mouth were:

"I've got some rules while I'm doing stand-up. Faggots aren't allowed to look at my ass while I'm on stage. that's why i keep moving while I'm up here, because you don't know where the faggot section is"

Well, a roar went up from the audience, and from the kids at the birthday party, while I sat there growing red-faced, and as he continued talking about "faggots", I found myself becoming light-headed, and eventually I managed to excuse myself, and spent most of the next hour in the bathroom trying to tune everything out.

That was about it for me and Eddie Murphy. I've heard that he later apologized for the things he said in this concert and in the concert film Raw, but I don't recall hearing it. I remember him giving either Oprah or Barbara Walters the excuse, "Well, I was young", but that's about it.

I'm curious to hear your opinions. If an entertainer spent his early years mired in homophobia, would you be able to look past it later in his career, even if he apologized?