The Nutty Professor (character) The Nutty Professor (character) The Nutty Professor (known as Julius E. Kelp in the original film (1963) and as Prof. Sherman Klump in the 1996 remake, and by his alter ego Buddy Love) is a fictional character portrayed by Jerry Lewis in "The Nutty Professor" and its respective sequel, and by Eddie Murphy in the 1996 version and its 2000 sequel "". Julius E. Kelp is an awkward and shy but intelligent and lively chemist professor. Sherman Klump is a jolly, kind-hearted science teacher at Welman College. Murphy also played the rest of Klump's family in the sequel. Lewis was
Buddy film in films about outlaw buddies, and criminals in action films about cop buddies. The buddy film is more common to cinema in the United States than cinema in other Western countries, which tend to focus on male–female romantic relationships or an individual male hero. Film historian David Thomson observes that buddy films are rare among British and French films, "You just wouldn't see three Englishmen behave the way American men do, who are truly happiest when they are together with other men." Portrayal of male bonding in the United States traces back to 19th-century author Mark Twain's characters Huck Finn