Susan Granger’s review of “Meet Dave” (20th Century-Fox)
Eddie Murphy knew what he was doing when he skipped the premiere of his new movie; he was avoiding a public embarrassment.
In this sci-fi comedy, Murphy plays a human-sized spaceship and its tiny captain controlling the craft from a deck in the spaceship’s head. With his home planet Nil facing extinction, Dave Ming Chang (Murphy) and his crew are dispatched to Earth to mix with the humanoids while searching for an essential device that was intended to absorb all the water from our oceans so the Nilians can have the salt. That involves Dave’s landing at the Statue of Liberty in his pristine white suit and gaining the trust of a young boy, Josh (Austyn Lind Myers), and Gina, his hippie single mom (Elizabeth Banks).
While the outlandish alien set-up is amusing for about 15 minutes, the sloppy script by sit-com veteran Rob Greenberg & Bill Corbett (“Mystery Science Theater 3000”) quickly sputters and stalls, leaving director Brian Robbins (“Norbit”) little to work with except toilet humor, cultural references like “Star Trek” jibes, and Murphy’s usual slapstick shtick, turning all too often to maudlin moments with Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union, who plays his inch-tall extraterrestrial cultural officer. Miniature menace comes from Dave’s power-hunger “No. 2” (Ed Helms).
Going back to his raunchy “Beverly Hills Cop” days and subsequent hits like “48 Hours,” “Doctor Doolittle,” “Coming to America,” “Shrek,” even “Dreamgirls,” Eddie Murphy has proved himself as one of the screen’s most engaging comedian/actors. So his participation in debacles like this and “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” is inexcusable. He desperately needs better advisors.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Meet Dave” is a tedious, time-wasting 3, apologizing to family-friendly audiences with, “Sorry, Earth, sometimes No. 2 happens!”
