Meet Dave

By Robbie Collin

A LITTLE help, please, with Meet Dave’s poster campaign, which is basically a massive photo of Eddie Murphy’s face.

Isn’t that like selling a trip to Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls with the tagline: “From the place that brought you Robert Mugabe”?

Because lest we forget (and I know I flipping won’t, despite the hypnotherapy), this is the man behind Haunted Mansion, Daddy Day Care and Norbit.

The Beverly Hills Flop trilogy.

Which proved you CAN sink lower than Nutty Professor II. Although not that far.

So brace yourselves for a shock. Kid- friendly comedy Meet Dave is NOT an abject disaster. Dave (Eddie Murphy) is a spaceship that’s built in the shape of a human being.

He’s staffed by tiny aliens (including Gabrielle Union), who are led by a captain (Eddie Murphy again), who have come to earth to retrieve a space probe.

Midway through his mission, Dave falls for a single mum (Elizabeth Banks) and the aliens end up learning a bit about what it means to be human. But not before rattling through a fair few toilet-humour sketches.

If your kids might be tickled by “a gas leak, silent but non-deadly, in the buttocks department”—then Meet Dave is worth a look.

It’s no masterpiece, but it does have its fair share of entertaining moments.

Just a pity Murph didn’t make a bit more of a film which, the Shreks aside, is his first non-abomination for nearly a decade.