Imagine That Review

There was a time when an Eddie Murphy film would be released and it was guaranteed gold. His stint on “Saturday Night Live” is one for the ages, and who can deny the hilarity of Coming to America and Trading Places? Somewhere around Beverly Hills Cop III he took a turn for the worse only to slightly be redeemed by The Nutty Professor and Shrek. As brilliant as he was in Dreamgirls, he seemed to sully that with Norbit and Meet Dave. And now comes Imagine That, a film that slowly rights the ship but ultimately brings it down and crashes it.

Now this blanket will give my career a third comeback right?

The concept of the film itself is actually pretty cute with a father actually going to his daughter’s imaginary world to find solutions to his problems. It’s interesting at the very least and the film plays off of it well for a short time. Murphy’s Evan Danielson comes off well in an otherwise cliche role as Eddie plays him more of a man rushing his daughter out of her “blanket phase” than an overbearing dad who doesn’t care. Director Karey Kirkpatrick delivers a formidable job during these scenes and rarely lets the film stray off. Perhaps the biggest success here in the opening is where most films would have just painted the father as Asshole Supreme, this picture gives Evan problems to paint his character. True it’ll dip into being way too cutesy at time or trying too hard, but somehow everyone makes it work. Even Thomas Haden Church’s over the top Johnny Whitefeather is tolerable during this time. Special mention should be given to Yara Shahidi as Evan’s daughter Olivia. Their relationship is handled fairly decent and nothing comes off forced or stilted.

It’s when Imagine That falls back on what every single family film does where it fails miserably. One might think that’s because it’s been there, done that but it has to do with how terrible the film handles the moments. There’s moments that can easily be seen coming (i.e. – Olivia’s concert colliding with Evan’s big meeting, gasp!) and it’s at this moment the wheels come off. Granted hey were already starting to, but this when the film loses control before it crashes into a fiery explosion of suck. Up to this point, the only groans that are evoked come from Murphy trying to sell a joke too much or some of the hi-jinks Olivia gets him into. Yes, this movie is what it is and no one should be surprised but it’s such a let down after the film had been working up to this point. Kirkpatrick tricks us into trying to like it by saving all of the cutesy bull for the end of the picture. Understandably this is a children’s film and should be taken as such, but the film did goodwill by not thinking it’s audience as mentally handicapped. When it finally thinks the viewers are too stupid to function, it has characters acting one way in one scene only to be the complete opposite in the following scene. This is why Imagine That could clock in as a disappointment given how different everything is handled in the first half as opposed to the second.

The supporting cast is all over the place which will begin with Thomas Haden Church’s Whitefeather. One assumes he’s a metaphor for the film as at first he’s tolerable but ultimately causes pain to the membrane. His “Indian” methods of being better than Evan at pitching work the first time, then make to wish Ronny Cox calls him into his office and introduces him to ED-209 (which, one a side note, I waited for the whole film but never received. Would have been much better had that happened.) The aforementioned Cox is fine even if he’s essentially Dick Jones minus the Dick part. On a personal level it was refreshing because he’s always going to be the Number Two Guy at OCP in my book. Nicole Ari Parker seems to be collecting a paycheck as nothing in the movie surprises, disappoints, or even makes her happy. Martin Sheen makes an appearance as well and he’s always welcome. Unfortunately he plays on one of the terrible cliches this film succumbs to, but Sheen guides the audience through it.

Imagine That’s a film primed for children so the question is will it play to them. There’s no quirky characters or anything identifiable that a child can shout “that’s awesome” to and relies more on the silliness of Eddie Murphy than anything else. It’s easy for a kid’s film to be “critic proof” but rare that it’s likely to be “audience proof” too. The things that worked were more of the “this isn’t so bad” variety and when the film doesn’t work it’s incredibly off the mark even for children. Eddie Murphy’s better than this, and Imagine That is proof he needs to go back to doing rated-R material.