Movie review: ‘Meet Dave’ is mediocre Murphy
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jul 14, 2008 at 1:13am
By Matt Martin
Meet Dave is a good (or is that bad?) example of what happens when so-so comedies happen to great comedic actors. Eddie Murphy shows his comic genius with scenes of physical sight gags on a par with Steve Martin’s battling himself in All of Me. But the bulk of the film leaves Murphy’s star power with little to shine on.
At least Meet Dave isn’t as abysmal as Murphy’s last Brian Robbins: Norbit. In fact, it has some funny scenes, just not enough of them. Murphy is one of our most talented comic actors—someone puh-leeze get this man in a great comedy.
As in many of his films, Murphy plays multiple roles. On one hand he’s the tiny (by Earth standards) captain of a humanoid shaped starship. The ship is played by Murphy, as well. It crash-lands in New York and the crew tries to make starship Dave behave as a human would.
Some of the bits are funny. The crew—controlling the voice and movements of the ship—decide “Dave Ming Wang” is a typical earth name. Several scenes of “Dave” aping earth behavior are wonderful, especially the scenes where he mimics a couple kissing in Central Park, learns to walk like a human, tries salsa dancing and learns a dozen ways to say, “Welcome to Old Navy.”
Unfortunately, the joke gets tired before the movie ends. And, as in too many Murphy movies, there’s way too much toilet humor. But when it’s funny, it recalls just how good one of our brightest, most successful comic actors can be. And the supporting cast (Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, and Ed Helms, among them) are fine. It’s just too bad that they don’t have a better film to work with.
It will be a mild pleasure to Meet Dave, but he overstays his welcome.
Meet Dave is rated PG for bawdy and suggestive humor, action and some language. Running time: 90 minutes. Macsimum rating: 5 out of 10. You can check out the film’s trailer on the QuickTime movie trailer site.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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