Meet Dave

A space captain who looks like Eddie Murphy is commanding a space ship that looks like Eddie Murphy. It’s the most narcissistic plot for a movie I have ever seen. You think the aliens would have hightailed it out of this galaxy after starring in Norbit (and it pains me to say it, but that’s the OSCAR nominated Norbit).

Murphy stars as the captain of Dave – a spaceship designed to look human, but controlled by dozens of miniature aliens who are intent on planting a device in the ocean that will suck up all of the salt water and save their planet (on the other hand, our planet would be screwed, especially the whales, so Greenpeace will be all over their asses). As you can imagine, they have some trouble making Dave appear to be a human being, but find a sympathetic mother, Gina (Elizabeth Banks), and her son, Josh (Austyn Myers, with a y?), who seem to hold important clues the aliens need to find the ocean sucking orb device, which was lost when sent to Earth a few months ago.

Will Dave’s crew find the device?

Will they want to destroy Earth after getting to know us fuzzy, warm and lovable beings?

I wish Meet Dave sparked some sort of passion out of me.

It’s not detestable to the point where venom spews out of me as I type the review and my outrage manifests itself in nasty, pithy, snarky comments that would get me kicked off the Eddie Murphy Christmas Card List for the rest of my life.

It doesn’t have enough heart to make a tear come to your eye when director Brian Robbins and writers Rob Greenberg and Bill Corbett try to impose a couple love stories on us.

It doesn’t even have enough sci-fi to get my inner geek jumping for joy.

Meet Dave is just sort of blah with some chuckles thrown in.

Greenberg and Corbett give the audience all of the jokes you expect, with an amazingly small amount of potty humor (I guess the Norbit writers were too busy helping out with Love Guru or Zohan). They provide all sorts of observations about how outsiders would view our culture, way of life, behaviors and habits, which sometimes provoke a giggle, especially when Ed Helms, as the second in command, overreacts to every situation. However, when Robbins and the gang focus on showing us how the aliens are learning about love and those sneaky feelings, it feels like someone slipped a Lunesta in my Cherry Coke.

Meet Dave is rated PG for bawdy and suggestive humor, action and some language.