Meet Dave

Meet Dave is a 2008 science-fiction comedy film directed by Brian Robbins. It stars Eddie Murphy in dual roles.

Plot
Dave Ming Chang (Eddie Murphy) is the ultimate fish out of water. Even though he's just arrived in New York, that doesn't explain his odd behavior or disjointed locomotion. The outside Dave is actually a spaceship, controlled by a crew of tiny aliens, and modeled after their captain. As the crew contends with a slew of physical challenges, such as eating, drinking and excreting, they begin to experience profound emotional changes as well.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The plot itself is generic and has been overdone, as it consists of an alien crash-landing onto Earth and avoiding police officers that are out to get him.
 * 2) The two characters that Murphy plays in this movie are uninteresting, especially compared to mh:greatestmovies:The Nutty Professor and even Norbit. Here, he plays the titular character and the Captain, who is just Eddie Murphy, but one is bigger and a robot, while the other is smaller, inside the robot and is a captain.
 * 3) Uses product placements from Old Navy and the PlayStation 2.
 * 4) The way Eddie Murphy moves when he plays Dave is awkward and stiff, but for some, it makes sense since he's a robot. But still, if in his own right when he plays the Captain, then he's just himself.
 * 5) The production design inside of Dave's body looks pretty uninteresting, mainly as it looks cheap and extremely fake.
 * 6) Most of the jokes fall flat. For example, when the Captain first uses Dave's speaking-device, his voice is so high pitched that it makes everything blow up around him, which makes no sense. then when he lowers it, he sounds likes he's on drugs. There's also a scene where Dave poops coins.
 * 7) Some of the special effects are cheaply made. For example, the lightning bolts used on Dave in one scene look extremely fake.
 * 8) For some reason, no one (at least not until the very end of the film) notices that Dave is a robot, which is strange because in one scene he treats a toy toad-like an enemy, which shows that the aliens have no knowledge of humanity and life on earth in general.
 * 9) When Dave is controlled by an evil captain it makes no sense what he wants to do, he wants to make the river of New York look more like Nil and make earthquakes and hurricanes to destroy the world, which it can't decide if it wants to be a sci-fi or disaster movie at the end and goes completely off tracks.
 * 10) The names of the people living inside Dave are generic. For example, The Captain, Number 1-8, and so on, which shows the laziness that must've gone through the producers' minds.
 * 11) The bully situation for the little boy whom Dave tries to protect might've worked better as a sub-plot.
 * 12) The relationship between the boy and Dave is a clear knockoff of the 1960s anime series Gigantor. Furthermore, Dave defending the boy from the bullies is a ripoff of the 2003 christmas comedy, Bad Santa.
 * 13) The opening scene does not do a really good job of trying to explain to people what kind of movie this may be or what it is about.
 * 14) A pointless romantic sub-plot between the Captain and Number 3.
 * 15) The movie never explains why the captain wanted to create a robot and go to earth, when in fact the people inside Dave, including the captain, already look like humans.
 * 16) The relationship between the kid and his mother is very mean-spirited.
 * 17) Some of the writing can be very cheesy at times.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The movie does have some funny moments, like The Old Navy scene where Dave greets everyone who is there.
 * 2) Passable acting.
 * 3) While cheap, some of the special effects are fine.
 * 4) The villains have an interesting plan to take control of Dave, although it did not make sense.
 * 5) The ending wasn't too bad.
 * 6) The kid does try his best to prove everyone that Dave is a nice guy.
 * 7) The soundtrack is at least passable composed by John Debney.

Reception
The movie holds a 20% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a general consensus that states: "Easy gags and slack direction drag this occasionally alien-out-of-planet comedy down to unimaginative lows." On Metacritic, the film has weighted a score of 43 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews," while IMDb has an average score of 5/10.

Trivia

 * 1) A few comedians made fun of this movie and pointed out that it would be better as a direct-to-video movie.