The most honest image in Meet Dave is that of Eddie Murphy literally shitting money. Brian Robbins’ film, which cross-breeds Fantastic Voyage and The Brother From Another Planet (with an inevitable sprinkling of E.T.) is sure to be the latest in a series of profitable special-effects comedies seemingly pulled out of its star’s ass.

Meet Dave is not as noxious as Norbit, which saw Murphy pulling triple duty as a meek nebbish, his pachydermous girlfriend and a fortune-cookie Chinese wiseman; that film was a garish parade of stereotypes masquerading, unconvincingly, as affectionate, equal-opportunity farce. This time out, Murphy only plays two roles: the captain of an alien starship sent to Earth to recover some sort of vital orb, and the man-sized starship itself. The humor, such as it is, stems from the tiny aliens’ variable ability to puppeteer their craft (which they eventually dub “Dave”) into mimicking plausible human behavior.

The script, by Rob Greenberg and Bill Corbett, is a collection of obvious embarrassment-humor gags (an uncomprehending Dave drinks a bottle of ketchup!) tempered by eye-rolling sentimentality. It hurts to type this, but in the course of their adventures — most of which involve a smokin’ hot war widow/abstract painter (Elizabeth Banks) and her Elll-iii-otttt-manque kid (Austyn Myers) — the wee extra-terrestrials, who apparently live in a sexless (though pointedly multi-racial) society, learn to lighten up and love humanity. The humorless second officer (Gabrielle Union) unleashes her inner glamour girl; a black crewman discovers the joys of bass-heavy music; a mustachioed security guard comes out of his very small closet into full-on mincing queen-dom. Ah: there are the garish stereotypes masquerading as affectionate farce. Phew, I knew they were in here somewhere.

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