MOVIES - July 3, 1992

Not So Funny: A joke in Paramount’s new Eddie Murphy movie, “Boomerang,” has drawn the ire of the Japanese American Citizens League, which finds “mimicking” the Korean language by an African-American woman “demeaning and insensitive” in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots. A Paramount spokesman said Thursday he had responded to a letter from the league, saying the line was part of a “good-natured comedic exchange between two characters . . . and audiences are seeing it that way.” He also noted that “Boomerang” is a satire and “makes satiric comments about relationships between men and women and between races.”