This movie’s weak opening must be payback for Eddie Murphy’s previous “family comedy,” the atrocious Norbit. Yet even though Murphy has reteamed with that film’s director, Brian Robbins, this sci-fi-slanted follow-up is much more palatable. (Which is an example of why the importance of directors can be overrated and writers overlooked; the writers on this wrote for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Frasier.) Not only does Murphy play an alien, but he also plays a spaceship that looks and sounds just like a spastic, stiff Eddie Murphy. See, the aliens are really tiny, and they’ve come to New York City on a mission to repair a young boy’s self-esteem. Okay, it’s actually to save their planet somehow, but you could be forgiven for any confusion.
The aliens are all Mr. Spock serious until those decadent earth ways start rubbing off. Watching the aliens (who are all hidden inside the human-shaped spaceship) start to “get down” will probably be painful for adults, and when alien Eddie’s would-be girlfriend (Gabrielle Union) started getting jealous of spaceship Eddie’s flirtation with “gigantic” mom Elizabeth Banks, well, I think I audibly groaned.
My rating may be generous on account of the movie being better than I expected (awful), and because I am looking at it from the point of view of a pre-teen target audience. And I did laugh some. It doesn’t make any sense that Eddie Murphy talks in an unplaceable accent while the rest of the crew sound like native-born Americans. It doesn’t make sense that they seem to know most every English word but assume that “Welcome to Old Navy” must be a typical greeting. (And yet, seen from a product-placement point of view, it’s perfectly logical.) But the accent, and Murphy’s performance, amused me, and the fish-out-of-water plot was not without its moments.
IMDB link
viewed 7/12/08 at Moorestown; reviewed 7/17/08
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