Production notes

After the success of Shrek, DreamWorks Pictures co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg signed up Eddie Murphy to star in a live-action follow-up, and they were looking for the right film. Norbit seemed like a good fit, a production in line with his tradition of playing multiple characters in a comedy as Murphy had done before with Coming to America and The Nutty Professor. DreamWorks production president Adam Goodman brought the script to director Brian Robbins and he was excited about the prospect of working with Murphy. Norbit was the first of three films where Robbins and Murphy worked together; the other two would be Meet Dave and A Thousand Words. Murphy wrote the story after going on the Internet to see videos "where really large women, African-American women, would beat up their tiny husbands", a concept which he found hilarious. Although Norbit was always intended to be a comedy, early drafts of the script were much darker. According to Thandiwe Newton, during filming, the stand-ins were very convincing, and she frequently filmed scenes with them instead of Murphy. The various prosthetic makeups, bodysuits, and wigs were created by Rick Baker and his company Cinovation. Baker praised Murphy saying "He really makes the stuff come to life, and he never complains. When we did 'The Nutty Professor' [...], he spent 80-odd days in the makeup chair. As much as I love makeup, even I would have been complaining by the end, but Eddie didn't." Baker wanted to work from a real life model and auditioned over a hundred extra large ladies, all with the necessary proportions. The model also needed to be able to dance. After several rounds of auditions, one lady was chosen as the life model for Rasputia and a foam latex suit was created based on her measurements. The suit's surface was painted with silicone to make it look like skin. Silicone was also used to make matching gloves. The shape of Murphy's face was changed using foam latex and pieces of silicone, which were then painted over in various tones of red, brown and yellow to create realistic looking skin tone. A body double was used for some scenes, particularly the water park. Murphy with his face in makeup as Rasputia performed against green screen and his head was digitally composited onto the body double.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 9% of 122 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Coming off his Oscar-nominated performance in Dreamgirls, the talented-but-inconsistent Eddie Murphy plays three roles in Norbit, a cruel, crass, stereotype-filled comedy that's more depressing than funny." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 27 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a B grade, with under eighteens (28% of those surveyed) giving it a B+ grade. The film was released in the middle of Oscar voting season, and the overwhelmingly negative reaction is believed to have cost Murphy his Best Supporting Actor Oscar that he was nominated for that year for Dreamgirls (2006), as voters would be hesitant to vote for him after seeing this film. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the movie a positive review, suggesting that Norbit might help Murphy's chances of winning an Oscar for his role in Dreamgirls, saying that his work playing three distinct characters in Norbit is more impressive than anything he did in Dreamgirls. Others suggested it might hurt his chances. Ultimately, Alan Arkin won the award for Best Supporting Actor. Luke Sader of The Hollywood Reporter called it "Racially insensitive, politically incorrect and beyond crude." Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club gave the film a grade of "F" and wrote: "It probably isn't possible for a single movie to reverse all social progress made since the civil-rights era, but Norbit, the latest broadside from Eddie Murphy, does its best to turn back the clock" and "hideously offensive black stereotypes are merely the tip of the iceberg." Josh Tyler of CinemaBlend gave the movie a mostly negative review, in which he described parts of the film as "pretty despicable" and stated that "the plot relies on the idea that being fat also means you're a horrible bitch." However, he pointed out that "some of it's also kind of sweet. Eddie's really quite good as Norbit, the character is sympathetic and funny. He has a strange sort of perfect chemistry with Thandie Newton, and that's just not something I would have expected." Liz Braun of Jam! Movies described Norbit as "mostly blubber jokes about how fat Rasputia really is" but said that "the movie is not without genuine laughs. Most of those laughs are generated by the other actors." In regard to the "terrifying" character Rasputia, she went so far as to say that the film "tends to confirm one's worst suspicions about Murphy and what appears to be his general fear and loathing of women. The Rasputia gag gets a little freaky if you think about it too much. And you wouldn't want to dwell on how much Thandie Newton looks like a slender boy in her role as Norbit's true love, either. So don't." Black activists took issue with Eddie Murphy's portrayal of the character Rasputia, calling Norbit "just the latest [film built] around a black man dressing up as an unsophisticated, overweight black woman." Film critic MaryAnn Johanson said it was a minstrel show and called it a "hideous stew of bigoted 'humor'". The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody praised Murphy's performances saying "playing multiple roles, Murphy unleashes, with a sense of painful revelation, a tangle of rage, cringing fear, furious power, and a sense of perpetual and unresolved outsiderness." He rated it 17th of 30 top acting performances of the 21st century.

Director Brian Robbins reacted to the negative reviews claiming that "The only films that get good reviews are the ones that nobody sees. I just don't think you can make movies for critics". He also defended his star-driven, high-concept movies’ approach to filmmaking, and praised Murphy's performance, saying that "Eddie Murphy plays three amazingly different characters brilliantly. How could you not praise that? No offense to Alan Arkin, but he couldn't do what Eddie did in 'Norbit.'" Jim Emerson of RogerEbert.com criticized Robbins' response, comparing his reaction to the “ancient analogy about McDonald's and food critics”. He suggested that Robbins' films "were neither designed for, nor marketed to, people who pay all that much attention to movie critics". Emerson also points out that several of the top-grossing films of 2006 got both good reviews from critics and gained wide audiences.

Industry projections expected Norbit to earn about $20 million in its opening weekend, and Paramount was projecting earnings of $25 million. The film opened to $34.2 million in the United States, and was Eddie Murphy's 14th #1 box office opener. The film earned $95.7 million at the North American domestic box office, and $63.6 million in other markets, for a total of $159 million worldwide. The film was released in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2007, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends, before being overtaken by 300.

Norbit was nominated for eight Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture, and won three awards, all for Eddie Murphy as three different characters. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Makeup.

In a 2025 interview, Murphy expressed his affection for Norbit, saying, "I love Norbit." Despite the film's heavy criticism—including Razzies for Worst Actor, Worst Actress, and Worst Actor of the Decade—Murphy stood by the movie and dismissed the negative backlash. "Come on, that stuff isn't that bad," he remarked. Reflecting on the film's lasting impact, he added, "To this day, I like it. Stuff in Norbit still makes me laugh." Musician Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys called Norbit his favorite movie in a 2007 interview with Mark Voger for the Asbury Park Press. Voger later wrote about his discovery in 2025 that the exchange had grown into an Internet meme, with fans of Wilson dedicating their reviews of the movie to him in the wake of his death that year and merchandise being sold featuring Wilson in the movie. In response to the claim that Wilson was "trolling" in his response, Voger said that he "believe[d] he meant it 'in the moment.'"