Meet Dave

Meet Dave finds Eddie Murphy playing the teeny-tiny captain of a crew of bite-sized aliens traveling to Earth in a human-sized spaceship that looks just like him. Dispatched to our planet in search of water for their parched world, the extraterrestrials think they know how their fully functional spaceship should respond to external stimuli to conceal “his” identity and purpose. But when single mom Gina (Elizabeth Banks) and her adolescent son Josh (Austin Myers) hit the alien craft with their car, the crew’s carefully calibrated plans are knocked into a cocked hat. The laughs in this comedy, which was reportedly budgeted at $60 million, are derived from Murphy’s outrageous mugging, verbal faux pas and jerky movements. If you’re looking for something to keep the moppets giggling, Meet Dave will pass muster.

Shelf Talk: Bouncing back from a not-great run of films in the earlier part of the decade (I Spy, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Showtime), Murphy, the most successful Saturday Night Live alumnus in Hollywood, has been doing some bang-up work at the box office and home entertainment register of late (Dreamgirls, Norbit and the Shrek sequels). His latest is a critical and commercial embarrassment, but it’s sure to do some nice DVD business, particularly with the youngsters. Older viewers might not be as amused or interested.