REVIEW: Meet Dave
By: Lee Rice
“Meet Dave,” Eddie Murphy’s latest multi-role comedy, is a classic case of style over substance. Although everything is technically well executed, everything else seems to be ridiculously recycled and tired.
Everyone has heard of what is called a “fish out of water” story-- A character from a far away place comes to our society and makes all sorts of comical mistakes before finally changing the people around them by virtue of their fresh perspective. It’s been done before in the “Crocodile Dundee” series, “Borat,” and Eddie Murphy’s own “Coming to America.”
“Meet Dave” follows the same set routine that we’ve all seen a hundred thousand times before with none of the wit, charm, or originality displayed by other films of this kind. It’s like someone came across a handbook on how to create a fish out of water movie, and decided to follow it to the letter.
Let’s pick things apart.
First, we need the outsider. Here, we get Dave, an Eddie Murphy-shaped exoskeleton designed to transport a race of small aliens around Earth in a quest to steal our oceans for their home world.
Check.
Then, we need our prerequisite love interest and charming younger character that identifies with Dave in a way no one else can. To this extent, we get a single mother and her grade-school aged son.
Double check.
Everything plays out exactly as you would expect from a movie of this kind, including Dave’s hackneyed “believe in yourself” speech to the kid, and the so-syrupy-it-gives-you-diabetes, “What is love?” question. It’s like they watched every fish out of water story they could get their hands on, then pried bits and pieces out of better movies to make their own film.
Even with the issue of unoriginality thrust aside, “Meet Dave” is what I have heard called an “idiot movie.” In this kind of movie, the plot relies on characters taking the stupidest course of action possible in order to further the plot.
Pop quiz, you are a single mother driving through Manhattan. Suddenly, you hit a man with your car. Minutes later, after he has mysteriously dissapeared, you see him standing outside your house in an alleyway with a broken leg. You go down to offer assistance, but by the time you get there, his leg appears to have perfectly healed, and he is speaking in tongues.
Do you A.) Slowly back out of the alley since you are dealing with an unstable person who obviously doesn’t need your help, then wait with your son until you are sure this possibly dangerous character has left the area?
Or do you B.) Invite him in for breakfast, introduce him to your son, and ignore the yowls from the next room as he does something horrible to your cat?
The mother character spends the entire movie making the worst possible decisions in regard to her families safety. It only gets more and more outrageous as the movie progresses, up to the point where you can only stare in awe at the idiocy before you.
The only high points in “Meet Dave” are the special effects and production design. They are both top notch, and nobody can deny the prowess of the people who tackled those areas of the movie.
The dopey, sappy, and moronic script aside, the actors actually do a decent job with the material they were given. While the kid and his mother occasionally overplay their roles, Murphy keeps things on a par with the character he’s portraying. Which is to say, he overplays it as well, but he’s at least justified in doing so.
The humor displayed here is mostly benign, with nothing that’ll really insult anyone or make anybody cringe. The jokes mostly stem from the fish out of water premise, so we’ve seen a lot of them before, but there are a few original bits and pieces stuck in that will satisfy viewers.
At the end of the day, “Meet Dave” is nothing but light family fair. If you want an evening out with the kids, everyone will probably have fun, but if you’re looking for something fresh and new, or for something a bit more adult, then this fish out of water story is strictly catch and release.
Final Verdict: 2/5
