Once titled “Starship Dave,” this Eddie Murphy vehicle escalates the stranger-in-a-strange land premise of “Coming to America.” Murphy captains a spaceship, and also plays this craft. Landing face first on Liberty Island near the Statue of Liberty, it was built as a replica of Ricardo Montalban’s white-suited character on “Fantasy Island.” The aliens intercepted a transmission of an episode of that TV show, and figured a humanoid craft in seventies threads could walk undetected among New Yorkers. The teensy travelers inside the vessel use Google to pick its name, “Dave Ming Chang,” and to decode American vernacular. Watch out for those idioms! Gaffes ensue. Dave’s mission is to recover an orb sent three months ago to suck up Earth’s oceans and abscond with salt needed to save their dying planet. Except the thing landed in the fishbowl of 11-year-old Josh (Austyn Lind Myers), where it cannot access our seas. After Dave is hit by Josh’s mom and errant driver Gina (Elizabeth Banks), Dave befriends the earthlings. Dave triggers mutiny aboard Dave when he decides against killing our planet to save his. Ahhhh. Murphy does a little robotic shtick, but using his nose as a pencil sharpener to impress Josh’s fifth-grade class might only tickle third-graders. Dave takes the book “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” too literally, and sees “It’s a Wonderful Life” as America’s bible. The swish-‘n-snap! jokes about one closeted alien are very 1980s. These retro jokes are credited to screenwriters Rob Greenberg and Bill Corbett, who credit the Yale School of Drama for their advanced degrees. With Gabrielle Union, Scott Caan, Ed Helms and Kevin Hart. 90m. (Bill Stamets) (Bill Stamets)
Related Stories
Meet The Fabelmans: A Review Of Spielberg’s Iliad On a journey from blinding light to a kindly cyclops, Steven Spielberg simplifies his own early life in "The Fabelmans," in gestures as brisk as the flick of a wrist.
