Meet Dave is a dopey science-fiction comedy that makes children squeal with laughter. It's the bum jokes.
This middle-of-the-road Hollywood fluff tells the story of tiny aliens who come to earth to retrieve an important bit of equipment that's central to saving their own planet.
The tiny beings travel in a spaceship that looks just like a human being -- Eddie Murphy, in fact -- so that real humans won't suspect aliens are in their midst. The ship is modeled after its captain, also Eddie Murphy, and among his super-smart crew are actors Gabrielle Union, Ed Helms and Pat Kilbane.
The aliens are vastly superior to humans. They have no qualms about the fact that saving their own planet will mean the end of ours. All they have to do is get that equipment back from the little Earth boy (Austyn Myers) who found it. And that's a simple matter of having the human-looking spaceship interact with the boy and his mother (Elizabeth Banks). Only it's not so simple ...
The humour in Meet Dave is mostly physical, but the movie has bits of inspired writing and a general air of good-hearted fun. As Dave-the-spaceship, Murphy must learn human behaviour through imitation, which is often hilarious; his mistakes run to goofy bits like drinking ketchup from the bottle and imitating the Bee Gees falsetto singing.
Even jokes older than vaudeville itself -- Dave walks into a closet instead of walking out the door, for example -- are completely new to kids, and at the screening of Meet Dave that we attended children laughed with delight throughout.
Dave is a machine, another source of the movie's humour. He can sharpen a pencil by sticking it up his nose and he can print paper money, which flutters from his bottom. Needless to say, this is an eight-year-old's idea of brilliant. And it's all done with such innocent glee that grown-ups laugh, too.
The aliens in Meet Dave begin to change for the better through their interaction with humans. They become interested in sharing, in helping others and in loving one another, so it's not as if the movie lacks a message.
It also doesn't lack product placement (Old Navy, McDonald's and the like) or stereotypes (one alien embraces the gay life on Earth with over-the-top Broadway enthusiasm), but there's nothing too egregious.
Meet Dave has some mild-mannered special effects, including a sequence in which the tiny aliens played by Murphy and Gabrielle Union have to navigate their way through the giant landscape of New York City. The effects themselves are vaguely fuzzy and rarely anything to write home about, but they fit perfectly with the spirit of the movie and never threaten to overtake the storytelling.
Director Brian Robbins keeps things moving along briskly and maintains a genial air throughout; all that plus an air-conditioned theatre makes Meet Dave a good bet for family viewing.
(This film is rated PG)
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