The best compliment I can give Meet Dave is that it is better than Norbit. If you’ve ever seen Norbit, you know that’s not much of a compliment. Just in case you’re counting, that’s two stinkers in a row for Eddie Murphy after his dazzling, Oscar-nominated performance in Dreamgirls.
Although Murphy plays dual roles in Meet Dave, thankfully neither of them includes a fat suit. Hopefully that’s because it was worn out after Murphy’s two Nutty Professor films and Norbit.
I can’t say the movie is totally terrible; there are a few chuckles, mainly at the beginning. But those few funny moments can’t hold together this extremely thin plot penned by Bill Corbett (a former writer and performer on Mystery Science Theater 3000) and Rob Greenberg (an Emmy-winning writer and producer on Frasier).
Basically, Dave is a spaceship created by miniature aliens. The audience sees those aliens navigating the ship inside Dave’s head. The aliens need something from Earth to take back to their planet for survival.
Murphy is both "Dave" the spaceship and the unnamed captain inside the spaceship who’s dictating his words and actions. There’s a group of unnamed aliens also helping the captain maneuver the ship, including Number 2 (Ed Helms) and Number 3 (Gabrielle Union).
Once spaceship Dave lands on Earth, he is hit by a car while crossing a Manhattan street. The driver, single mom Gina Morrison (Elizabeth Banks), feels bad and wants to make an amends, most likely in an effort to avert a lawsuit.
It just so happens that Gina’s son has the very object Dave has been sent to retrieve, and in the process, he bonds with Gina and her son.
The laughs stem from Dave’s complete lack of knowledge regarding human life. He takes "clear the table" a little too literally and thinks ketchup should be consumed straight from the bottle. His attire is inspired by the TV show FantasyIsland, and when the aliens inside Dave’s head realize that’s outdated, they send him to Old Navy for an updated outfit. After being greeted by an overly perky sales associate, he assumes "Welcome to Old Navy!" is a common Earth greeting and proceeds to say it to everyone in the store.
The talents of Helms (who I recognized as Andy Bernard from The Office), Union and Banks go to complete waste in this time-waster of a movie. Murphy spends a lot of time grinning at the camera, proving he has the act of camera-mugging down to a science. As far as acting, the script and direction from Brian Robbins (yet another Norbit connection, since he directed it as well) don’t ask Murphy to exert himself.
The only good news here is that Meet Dave is a perfectly safe film to take the kids to, with no offensive humor, aside from a flamboyant gay character, which feeds the stereotype more than it offends.
Published news reports say Murphy didn’t even bother to show up for the Los Angeles premiere of this movie last week, even though he was in town shooting another movie.
I say if Murphy can’t even show up to Meet Dave, how can he expect anyone else to? This is one movie that’s OK to skip. •• Movie Grade: D