Imagine That

Review by Jason Donner

Eddie Murphy is back because obviously we are all terrible people who deserve to be punished.  In his new movie, Imagine That, Murphy plays an absentee father who has put his career in front of everything else, but when his little girl's imaginary friend starts giving out very real stock advise, Murphy discovers the joy of fatherhood because, after all, it's a perfectly natural thing that fathers will ignore their children until they can get some kind of financial gain out of them.

I suppose I should be thankful that, in the wake of Murphy's last movie, Norbit, he has gone from offensively unfunny to cutsie unfunny.  Granted, I'm not that big of a fan of cutsie unfunny either, but at least I didn't leave the theater pissed off.

Being that this is a Disney movie, the artificial cuteness is piled on with shovels and is every bit as insincere as you are no doubt imagining it is.  Imagine This follows the same tried and true formulas that we have seen a million times over and adds nothing new or original to any of it.  The lack of special effects in this movie as well only goes to prove that the studio just put out something sweet and cheap to rake in money.  I don't admire the movie, but I do admire the business model.

Maybe I am being a little unfair to Imagine That, but I was a fan of Eddie Murphy for so long only to have my skull raped time and time again anytime I went to a theater to support his work.  You've burned me, Eddie.  I loved you and you burned me.

I suppose Imagine That is not a wholly terrible mess as are the last two decades of Eddie Murphy's resume, but it's just gosh darn mediocre and forgettable.  Aside from a few moments of cuteness from Nicole Ari Parker who plays his daughter and the screaming last vestiges of Eddie Murphy's funny gland, there is very little about this movie that I remember and I'm sure that a few years from now when I'm going through the archives, I will look at this review and wonder when the heck I wrote this and what the movie was about.

Yes, that is possible.  I found my review of The Brave One the other day and I remember zilch about the movie.

This is a movie made for kids involving stock futures they won't begin to understand and, at the most, I can say that it's an improvement over what Eddie Muphy's been doing.  Then again, projectile vomiting on a movie screen would be an improvement over what Eddie Muphy's been doing so take that how you wish.