Released in the US as the Academy went to the polls, rumour has it that Norbit cost Eddie Murphy the best supporting actor Oscar for Dreamgirls.

It’s easy to see why, since even the most ardent fans of The Nutty Professor may feel starved of goodwill by this debilitating case of comedy anorexia.

Norbit Rice is the meekest geek at Mr Wong’s orphanage, but he has the loveliest little soulmate in Kate. Sadly, their love is rent asunder when Kate is adopted.

But his woes really begin when he is saved from bullies by junior colossus Rasputia who makes him her boyfriend.

In time, the chalk-and-cheeseburger couple are taken in by Rasputia’s trio of equally fearsome brothers. They put Norbit to work in their construction business. After all, he’s going to be family (in this he has no choice).

All’s hell for Norbit until Kate (Newton, looking sheepish - and so she should) comes back with a plan to buy the orphanage.

But his romantic hopes are dashed when he discovers that she intends to marry dodgy Deion (Gooding, maintaining career free-fall), whose only sincere proposal is to rip her off and turn the kids’ home into a strip joint with Rasputia’s brothers.

To play Norbit, Murphy adopts a dorky afro and an unfunny lisp. As Mr Wong, he hides behind a few layers of latex and an unfunny Ching-Chong-Chinaman accent. And Rasputia is a mountain of rubber blubber with an unfunny catchphrase - "how YOU doin’?"

Hohoho - fat people, eh? They eat loads. They make things collapse. They get stuck in small spaces. They shout and snore and fart… really loudly.

Six-time Oscar-winner Rick Baker’s make-up effects are, as ever, fantastic – an adjective which applies to absolutely nothing else in this desperate ordeal. It makes Shallow Hal look like Citizen Kane.

Murphy’s powers of comic invention have entirely deserted him here, though his brother Charles deserves some of the discredit as they concocted the ‘story’ together.

It’s little more than a lazy assembly of all the fat gags that weren’t worthy of the Klumps, replacing the heart of those movies with an unsavoury dollop of misogyny.

“Have you ever made a really big mistake?” goes the tagline. Watch Norbit and, like Oscarless Eddie, you’ll have your answer.

Elliott Noble