Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 19: Meet Dave

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or human-shaped spaceships that shit hot dogs.

On a Monday afternoon, myself and a couple of teenagers entered the theater to see Meet Dave. I spent the duration of the film lamenting the fate of late period Eddie Murphy; the teens spent the time drinking clandestine beers in the dark. I’d say they had the better end of the deal.

Ever since The Nutty Professor remake, Murphy has been on a downward spiral. I haven’t seen enough of his films over the past decade or so to say with absolute confidence that Meet Dave is the worst of the lot, but I can venture a pretty good guess. At any rate, Meet Dave hasn’t given me a reason to check out any of those other movies. Ever.

So what happened to the Eddie Murphy of Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, et al.? Has he tried too much to play to a family audience, becoming bland and inoffensive (and unfunny) in the process? Has he immersed himself into too many trite star vehicles, refusing to take any risks?

Of course, that much is true, but the real problem is more fundamental than that. Murphy has completely lost his sense of comedic timing. From his standup, through Saturday Night Live, to his early years as a major film star, Murphy was sharp as a tack. His reactions, and his knowing smirks, were delivered impeccably, his laugh lines were natural, solicitous even, making even the silliest jokes riotously funny. In Meet Dave, Murphy made me laugh exactly once, but that one joke was delivered so perfectly it left me wondering why he can’t pull off that trick more often.

Searching for the reason, though, is kind of futile. You never can tell where the talent goes. Other comedic actors, and Murphy contemporaries like Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd have lost the funny over the years, too, for whatever reason. Murphy, however, gets to keep making movies. The others don’t. And it’s not like any of Murphy’s non-Shrek films of late have been anything but colossal bombs. He keeps getting the chance, and keeps failing.

In Meet Dave, Murphy’s persona (or, rather, both of them, as he plays two parts, which is actually less than usual for him) is fundamentally annoying. He plays the captain of a spaceship from the planet Nil (which I think is supposed to be a joke, but I don’t get it), who speaks in a generic voice devoid of any emotion. The spaceship itself is designed in its captain’s image, and interacts (in Murphy’s voice) completely unnaturally, despite the fact that the humanoid miniatures who comprise its crew have verbal interactions that are recognizably human.

Unfortunately, Murphy drags a pretty good supporting cast down with him. Ed Helms plays Murphy’s first mate, and can’t play anything but annoyed throughout the whole film. Probably, Helms was frustrated himself that his agent signed him up for this movie. Elizabeth Banks, who’s hilarious when the script allows it, as in films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, plays a major part here, yet still doesn’t have anything much to do. Judah Friedlander shows up and does a boring version of his signature goof character. Gabrielle Union, who’s beautiful and endearing but pretty one note, plays Murphy’s love interest and shows why she doesn’t have any crossover appeal outside of things like Eddie Murphy movies.

The Nillians (still don’t get the joke) have landed on earth to steal the world’s water supply to save their own planet. Yet they become so infatuated with Earthlings that they can’t bring themselves to do it. It’s a shame their civilization will have to die, though it at least guarantees there won’t be a Meet Dave 2.

Film: Meet Dave
Director: Brian Robbins
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Scott Caan, Ed Helms, Gabrielle Union, Mike O’Malley, Judah Friedlander

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, me, drunk teens; standard projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 21%
My Grade (Out of 10): 1

Next Up: Mamma Mia!

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 18: Wanted

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or curvy bullet action.

In some kind of alternate, Matrix-free universe, Wanted would be seen as some kind of impressive technical achievement: the stunts are well choreographed, the plot deals with a richly developed hidden community, and the CGI can make bullets do some crazy stuff. Instead, Wanted comes off cold, trying to piggyback off of a superior sci-tech franchise about seven years too late.

Wanted’s signature move is its use of the “curved bullet,” a lame ripoff of BulletTime where the extreme slow motion is used to get a better look at the implement flying through the air. In the Matrix, it was a fresh technology, and it fit the impossibly high-tech motif of that film. In Wanted, the filmmakers try to build a plot around the effect, and just seem to come up small.

Still, that’s not nearly the biggest problem with Wanted. Even at their best, special effects can never make a movie. As a public, we’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see; every “new” effects style is really just a variation on what’s come before. Similarly, bad effects can’t break a film that has a rewarding narrative. This is filmmaking 101, and Wanted fails.

For starters, the plot is ridiculously convoluted. James McAvoy (who seemed to worry more about perfecting his American accent than bother with actually acting) starts out the film as average Joe schlub, working a dead end job, with a cheating girlfriend and a crippling anxiety disorder. Soon he’s recruited by Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman into The Fraternity (creative name!), a centuries-old team of assassins, under the pretense that his father (a world class killer who McAvoy had never known) has just been killed. And the same rogue who killed the father is now after McAvoy.

This turns out to be a lie, and the whole Fraternity concept turns out to be kind of bullshit itself. The lies upon lies make even the ostensible good guys unlikeable, and the filmmakers intended for McAvoy to come out as the lone wolf hero in this equation. But the film is anchored by occasional narration by the McAvoy character, where he unwittingly reveals himself to be a first class asshole, even going so far, in the film’s final moments, to insult the audience directly, essentially calling us out for not having freaky mind powers and taking delight in indiscriminately killing people. Thanks, James.

The rest of the cast in pretty plain and unremarkable. Jolie delivers a performance so one note that the biggest stretch of her acting talents comes when she devours a cheeseburger, and act which, judging by the width of her biceps alone, she would never accomplish in real life. Freeman, similarly, just shows up and does that thing he does in every movie. A kind appraisal of Freeman’s acting would call him a throwback to the golden age of cinema before method acting, when you just had to have a familiar face and a voice that echoed god’s. Me, I just get bored by seeing the same performance all the time. Though in this film, Freeman does say “fuck” a lot. It’s the little nuances that count.

In a big year for superheroes, Wanted plays a little bit with that genre, even if that’s not its main intention. The Fraternity members definitely have talents that are superhuman, but the film can’t decide if it wants to go down that road, or just make all its characters into little James Bonds, human but invincible, and with lots of cool gadgets. The whole endeavor seems incredibly schizophrenic, trying to develop audience loyalty in its characters, while not even really knowing what those characters are supposed to be. It may have been better served to play the superpower aspect up. In a hyper violent, high action mess like this, the audience might react better if it wasn’t expected to care about the characters on a human level. Especially in the case of McAvoy, who, by the end of the film, undermines all the goodwill he started with.

I realize it’s a bit like splitting hairs to worry about plot and characterization in a film that doesn’t really care about either. If Wanted wasn’t so derivative in the “stuff go boom” category, that other stuff might be forgivable.

Film: Wanted
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Stars: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Common

Viewing Situation: Weekend matinee, half full; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 72%
My Grade (Out of 10): 3

Next Up: Meet Dave