The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) is a comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 starring Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy

Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....

. The film was directed by Jonathan Lynn

Jonathan Lynn

Jonathan Lynn is an English actor, comedy writer and director. He is best known for being the co-writer of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.-Personal life:...

. In addition to Murphy, the film stars Lane Smith

Lane Smith

Walter Lane Smith III was an American actor. Some of his well known roles included portraying collaborator entrepreneur Nathan Bates in the NBC television series V, Mayor Bates in the film Red Dawn, newspaper editor Perry White in the ABC series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,...

, Sheryl Lee Ralph

Sheryl Lee Ralph

Sheryl Lee Ralph is an American actress, singer, and activist.-Personal life:Raised between Mandeville, Jamaica, and Long Island, New York, Sheryl Lee Ralph was born in Waterbury, Connecticut to an African American father and a Jamaican mother. Sheryl attended Uniondale High School in Uniondale, NY...

, Joe Don Baker

Joe Don Baker

Joe Don Baker is an American film actor, perhaps best known for his roles as a Mafia hitman in Charley Varrick, deputy sheriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III in Final Justice, real-life Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, brute force with a badge detective Mitchell in Mitchell, James...

, Victoria Rowell

Victoria Rowell

Victoria "Vicki" Lynn Rowell is an American actress and dancer. She is best known for her portrayal of ballerina-turned-model Drucilla Winters on the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless, and medical examiner/pathologist Dr. Amanda Bentley on the CBS drama Diagnosis: Murder...

, Grant Shaud

Grant Shaud

Grant Shaud is an American actor known for having played the character of Miles Silverberg on the 1990s TV sitcom Murphy Brown.-Early life:...

, Kevin McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy (actor)

Kevin McCarthy was an American stage, film, and television actor, who appeared in over two hundred television and film roles. For his role in the 1951 film version of Death of a Salesman, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of...

, Charles S. Dutton

Charles S. Dutton

Charles Stanley Dutton is an American stage, film, and television actor and director. He is perhaps best known for his roles as "Fortune" in the film Rudy and "Dillon" in Alien 3...

, Victor Rivers, Chi McBride

Chi McBride

Kenneth "Chi" McBride is an American actor. He starred as Steven Harper on the series Boston Public, as Emerson Cod on Pushing Daisies, and recently appeared in Fox's drama Human Target.-Early life:...

, Sonny Jim Gaines, and Noble Willingham

Noble Willingham

Noble Henry Willingham, Jr. was an American television and film actor.-Career:Willingham had appeared in more than thirty feature films, including Harry's War , Up Close and Personal , City Slickers , The Last Boy Scout , City Slickers II , Ace Ventura: Pet Detective , Chinatown...

.

The film's plot is centered on politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

, specifically what members of the Congress and lobbyists do to get what they want in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

Synopsis

A Florida con man named Thomas Jefferson Johnson uses the passing of the long time Congressman from his district, Jeff Johnson (who died of a heart attack while having sex with his secretary), to get elected to Congress, where the money flows from lobbyists. Shortening his middle name and calling himself "Jeff" Johnson, he receives the 5000+ signatures required to be on the ballot by becoming endorsed by a seniors organization, the Silver Foxes.

Once on the election ballot, he uses the dead Congressman's old campaign material and runs a low budget campaign that appeals to name recognition, figuring most people do not pay much attention and simply vote for the "name you know." He wins a slim victory and is off to Washington, a place where the "streets are lined with gold."

Initially, the lucrative donations and campaign contributions roll in, but as he learns the nature of the con game in Washington D.C., he starts to see how the greed and corruption makes it difficult to address issues such as campaign finance reform, environmental protection and the possibility that electric power companies may have a product that is giving kids in a small town cancer.

In trying to address these issues, Congressman Johnson finds himself double-crossed by Power and Industry chairman Dick Dodge. Johnson decides to fight back the only way he knows how, with a con.

Production

Eddie Murphy appeared in this Disney-produced film after a string of Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 star vehicle

Star vehicle

A star vehicle has historically been a movie, play, TV series, or other production whose primary purpose, besides turning a profit, is to enhance someone's career. Vehicles are most commonly produced when a young or inexperienced actor has signed a long-term contract with a major studio...

s. Bernie Weinraub, film reviewer for The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, offered his opinion that Murphy wished to "move beyond the tepid material" he had been given by Paramount. Writer and producer Marty Kaplan

Marty Kaplan

Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and the founding director of the Norman Lear Center for the study of the impact of entertainment on society...

 said of Murphy's involvement "I feel like I've come close to winning the jackpot".

The film was shot at various locations in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

; Harrisburg, PA

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...

; Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

, and Pasadena, CA

Pasadena, California

Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...

.

Critical response

It was released in December of 1992 and went on to gross approximately $47 million at the domestic box office

Box office

A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....

. Critical reaction to the movie however was mostly negative.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

 liked the premise and what it had going for it, but criticized it for its "slow pacing", despite it being a screwball comedy

Screwball Comedy

Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums.-Track listing:...

. Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....

 of Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

 called it "a sterile, joyless comedy, photographed in ugly, made-for-video close-up and featuring a farce plot so laborious it suggests John Landis

John Landis

John David Landis is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.-Early life and career:...

 on a bad day". eFilmCritic.com called it a "tepid Eddie Murphy political farce", and the film currently holds a 13% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

. It came at a time when Murphy was experiencing a career decline and this movie is considered one of his failures.

Despite its failure, the film did win a couple of awards: the Environmental Media Awards

Environmental Media Awards

The Environmental Media Awards have been awarded by the Environmental Media Association since 1991 to the best television episode or film with an environmental message....

 granted the movie with the award for feature film of 1993, and in 2001 the Political Film Society

Political Film Society

The Political Film Society is a nonprofit corporation that exists to recognize Hollywood films' ability to raise awareness in political matters in the world. Film makers are the ones who are awarded by this organization...

awarded the film its special award of the year.