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After all - once people stop paying to see your movies (Meet Dave and this both tanked worldwide in consecutive years), those sweet $20M cheques start to dry up pretty quickly.
Imagine That, stars Eddie Murphy as a successful financial
executive who has more time for his Blackberry than his seven-year-old
daughter (the wonderfully cute Yara Shahidi).
However, when he has a crisis of confidence and
his career starts going down the drain, he finds the solution
to all his problems in his daughter's imaginary world.
While Imagine That
is one of Murphy's most grounded flicks in a long time, there are still
several fundamental genre flaws which bog the film down.
First and foremost - the main focus and screen time of Imagine That
is spent on a business that even most adults (let alone the toddlers
the studio is aiming for) just don't get : the stock market.
How
you expect the kiddies to understand why "Daddy's job is so life and
death" when 95% of adults knowledge of Wall Street extends to "Stock
goes up, stock goes down... what's stock again?".
Why any studio would greenlight a pitch for Wall Street with kids is truly beyond me.
There
is also a distinct lack of laughs here too. In what should be a premise
ready to deliver the gags, there simply isn't that much to laugh about
(with so much of the action taking place in the boardrooms of the stock
firm). Yes, Imagine That is kind of fun... but not really all that fun-ny.
A
steroid enhanced Thomas Haden Church does his best to deliver something
redeemable with his hilarious performance as Murphy's wanky "Native
Indian" spiritual nemesis - but even when at his best, the gags will
zoom well over the heads of the littlies in the crowd far to easily.
Imagine That
isn't completely unwatchable - in fact you could be forgiven for
flicking over to it by accident on cable and sticking through to the
very end - but at the end of the day it is simply too slow, too unsure
of it's audience and just too bland.
Let us all hope that this is the turning point for Eddie Murphy to finally return to R Rated comedies... Imagine that! DVD Special Features
Considering how much money Imagine That lost at the Box Office, I'm genuinly surprised to see that the DVD is so jam packed. Included
here are five Deleted Scenes, some "Hilarious" outtakes, a commentary
with Director Karey Kirkpatrick and Yara Shahidi, as well as a bunch of
featurettes including "Yara Shahidi Set Tour", "A Playground of the
Mind", "Getting the Part", "Star Blanket: Native American Influence",
"The King and His Jesters" and "What Were They Really Saying?". Their worth is really up to you... but hardly worth the effort if you ask me. Conclusion:
Movie 50% Extras: 65%
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