Dreamgirls

It’s Eddie Murphy Inside Eddie Murphy in Made-For-Children Sci-Fi Comedy ‘Meet Dave’

HollywoodChicago.com — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:27:11 -0700

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The longtime career of Eddie Murphy has lately taken an interesting turn.

After a meteoric career with huge box-office comedies, Murphy has steered toward more family oriented fare (“Daddy Day Care,” the “Shrek” movies, etc.) before his Oscar-nominated performance in “Dreamgirls”. After the stumble of 2007’s “Norbit,” Murphy has again returned this summer in kid-friendly mode with “Meet Dave”.

Dave (Eddie Murphy) is shocked by some unexpected micro-boogying happening atop his shoulder in “Meet Dave”.
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox

This high-concept, science-fiction comedy involves a giant robotic spaceship that plunges to New York City and is shaped like – well, Eddie Murphy. It’s designed that way to walk among earthlings unobtrusively. It’s controlled by a tiny crew inside the body led by ship captain Eddie Murphy.

Eddie Murphy (left) and Gabrielle Union are pursued by a rubbery object previously unknown to them in “Meet Dave”.
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox

The mission is to retrieve a meteoric orb that their home planet, Nil, sent to Earth to suck up the oceans. As in what usually happens in the movie universe, the orb ends up mistakenly in the hand of a scrappy but sensitive boy (Austin Myers) who naturally lives with his widowed mother (Elizabeth Banks).

Meanwhile, the crew has to assimilate within the strange customs of New York City while keeping their outer space alien composure within the seductive world. They steer the “Dave” spaceship to hook up with the boy’s mother. The race is on to find the orb before the police (or at least the “X-Files” agents) can catch up with them.

The first act of the film has several decent laughs as the crew tries to make the robotic Dave blend in.

The walk, speech and outer shell of Dave is controlled by a flight deck straight out of “Star Trek” with Murphy as the captain doing a variation of his African voice from “Coming to America”. Dave the spaceship also makes several funny faces, actions and verbal gaffes while working to fit in on Earth.

Where the film falters is when it comes back to the plot and all the special effects associated with it. It is the “E.T.” variation done yet again with the earnest kid actor performing his lines as if he’s playing to the back row of the theater.

The strange behavior of the Dave spaceship creates no real chemistry with the mother or the boy even though they are forced through the entire story to gaze and act adoringly toward the dead-eyed alien. The subplot – involving the mutiny of the crew – is too complicated for a film of this type.

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It drags the entire story down with it. However, this did give the screenwriters an excuse to camp up the situation. The crew begins to adapt the unique cultural style of America, which apparently consists of misogyny, gay stereotypes and MySpace.

It is a kid’s movie, though, and many of the younger audience members laughed along with it (especially the gay stereotypes). Like the circuits and wires inside the Dave spaceship, it’s useless to try and dissect the elements too closely.

Note: If product placement is what you crave, than “Meet Dave” is the movie for you. Aside from commercials for Old Navy and Apple’s iPods, there were plugs for Google, Yahoo!, Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and most oddly the Broadway musical “A Chorus Line”. Creative financing lives indeed.

“Meet Dave,” which opened everywhere on July 11, 2008, stars Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Ed Helms, Austin Myers and Judah Friedlander.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

‘Sex and the City: The Movie’ a Frilly University For Understanding the Human Condition

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:14:47 -0700

CHICAGO – To its voracious universe of cult-following fans, it feels like a television marathon that spans an entire season. To everyone else who bats an indifferent eye at the religion that is “Sex and the City,” it may surprise you to find that all the glam and glitz has something even for you to learn, too.

Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City: The Movie”.
Credit: Craig Blankenhorn, New Line Cinema

The thorniest proposition for “Sex and the City: The Movie,” though, is opening the minds of all the anti-fashionistas (such as yours truly) and those who habitually bottle up their emotions for safekeeping.

After all, “Sex and the City” is often about a word that hurls the masses off in a scurry: feeling. For those who embrace all that is “love and labels,” though, the film begins by succinctly flashing back on plotlines avid followers know all too well.

Season watchers are nearly forced and relatively brainwashed into securing a theater seat, and unfortunately, followers and non-followers alike arrive to the theater with having already been told much too much from the trailer.

Will Carrie marry Big? Will Charlotte – who’s thought to be infertile – have her own baby? What will become of Miranda and the cheating Steve? Will the scurrilous Samantha actually settle down with Smith? Will the predominantly white cast finally paint some color into the picture?

To the last question, Chicago’s Jennifer Hudson (who on the film’s “pink carpet” said she gets bronzed by rubbing on her “Dreamgirls” Oscar) says yes. As for the other questions, the film would have injected even more “what’ll happen next?” revelation by not giving such an initial peek up its own dress.

After initially cursing the all-too-telling trailer, I planted myself in my theater seat prepared for a 142-minute commitment. Not so. At our press screening, we were treated to another 30 minutes of a live satellite feed that counted down to the Chicago screening with the pink-carpet coverage.

Left to right: Kristin Davis as Charlotte York-Goldenblatt, Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, Cynthia Nixon as Miranda Hobbes and Kim Cattrall as Samantha Jones in New Line Cinema’s “Sex and the City: The Movie”.
Photo credit: Craig Blankenhorn, New Line Cinema

Combined, the experience even neared the 195 minutes it took Steven Spielberg to give justice to the entire Holocaust in 1993’s “Schindler’s List”. Writer and director Michael Patrick King could have cut nearly 30 minutes of screen time had he met with an editor by the name of No Cheese For Me, Please.

Alas, though, this critic indeed scores “Sex and the City: The Movie” with a relatively positive rating of 3.5 out of 5.0.

Despite the aforementioned relatively trifling gripes, the film indeed gets to the heart of the human matter. In consistently exploring and explicitly discussing what women feel and what men need, the subject matter has a higher purpose.

It’s a purpose that’s to be commended in entertainment today because while it’s still certainly entertainment, everyone – no matter what race, religion, sexual orientation or relationship status – has something to take from these four women and the characters who surround them.

Chris Noth as Mr. Big in “Sex and the City: The Movie”.
Photo credit: Craig Blankenhorn, New Line Cinema

Of course, the “Sex and the City” style is to offer a carrot in the beginning and then change that story morale into, say, broccoli so we’re left with something to reflect deeply about. The process of delving into a woman’s head – for a man and even another woman – is ultimately a healthy exercise in understanding the human condition.

When women constantly compare themselves to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, they’re forced to ponder who they really are and who they want to become. Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon themselves know most women are a combination of the foursome as a whole.

The film also explores a primary fifth character that – while not credited among the cast – is as large and tangible as any one of them: New York. Director Michael Patrick King has made the claim that this story couldn’t have existed anywhere else. While that’s debatable, what’s fact is that the show has brought some people to New York not only for the American dream but for the romance of falling in lasting love.

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Cast as Sarah Jessica Parker’s assistant, Jennifer Hudson has a convincing moment where she expresses exactly that pursuit. But with everyone trying to get hitched, hasn’t this story’s thesis rested squarely on the allure of being a single woman? No longer.

That said, what is it about television and film that hooks us into wondering whether someone will fall in love, break up, get married, have a baby, stop drinking or kick that drug habit?

While these celebrities are people the everyman will never associate with in their lifetimes, they’re actually more like messengers conveying portions of who we really are and hoping we find ways to improve ourselves.

That, at least, should be the point. Michael Patrick King (who also wrote various “Will & Grace,” “Cybill” and “Murphy Brown” episodes) succeeds at dangling that carrot and leaving us with something to chew on.

“Sex and the City: The Movie” opened on May 30, 2008 everywhere.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com