space ghost
There's a beat at the end of the Meet Dave trailer, where the Eddie Murphy robot-spaceship (seriously, who's coming up with this stuff—Steve Urkel?) emits the refrain from "Stayin' Alive" in a high-pitched alien squawk followed by a mechanically abrupt grimace that reminds me of something Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman once wrote about Murphy's similarly radioactive Adventures of Pluto Nash:
"A space-comedy bomb that would hardly be worth mentioning if not for the rictus grin at its center: Eddie Murphy, doing his zomboid impersonation of a Carefree, Spontaneous Comedy Star, an act of such terrifying falseness that it has become the single most joyless image in showbiz."
Those sharp words may have seemed ungenerous back in 2002, but in 2008 they're almost elegiac.
"A space-comedy bomb that would hardly be worth mentioning if not for the rictus grin at its center: Eddie Murphy, doing his zomboid impersonation of a Carefree, Spontaneous Comedy Star, an act of such terrifying falseness that it has become the single most joyless image in showbiz."
Those sharp words may have seemed ungenerous back in 2002, but in 2008 they're almost elegiac.