Film

Meet Dave

Cert: PG

Description: A race of tiny aliens venture to Earth in search of a fallen meteorite, which holds the future to their doomed home planet. The extra-terrestrials, led by their Captain, conceal themselves inside a human-like robotic craft, which they name Dave Ming Chang, with the intention of mimicking the behaviour of other humans so Dave blends into the crowd. In this way, the aliens hope to quietly retrieve the meteorite from its resting place: a goldfish bowl belonging to a boy called Josh. With a limited amount of power to keep Dave moving, the Captain and his loyal crew race against time to find the meteorite.

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Dir: Brian Robbins.

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Scott Caan, Gabrielle Union

Country: US.

Year: 2008.

Duration: 90mins

Meet Dave is in another world

Frantic mugging: Eddie Murphy plays Dave

By Derek Malcolm
17 Jul 2008

This Eddie Murphy comedy is better than the crass Norbit - but that's not hard. Murphy appears as a robot who arrives from outer space into New York unable to understand anything about humans. It turns out that his body is also a spaceship, manned by a tiny crew who crawl out of his ears.

This promising premise is almost entirely destroyed not just by Murphy's frantic mugging but by the almost total absence of decent jokes. The plot sees Dave Ming Chang (the name he gives himself) meet a lonely single mother (Elizabeth Banks) and make friends with her and her young son. A mutiny on board Dave complicates matters but everything is all right in the end, as Dave falls in love not with the white widow but with the black second mate inside him. The widow gets a nice white policeman, so she'll be oK.