Imagine That (2009)

Directed by Karey Kirkpatrick. Starring Eddie Murphy, Yara Shahidi, Thomas Haden Church, Nicole Ari Parker, Ronny Cox, Martin Sheen, Stephen Rannazzisi, DeRay Davis, Lauren Weedman. [PG]

Head-scratching yawner of an inanimate, innocuous family film vehicle for Murphy casts him as the stereotypical “divorced dad who puts his career ahead of his kid(s).” Said kid is a little girl (Shahidi) with emotional problems that the screenplay neatly skims over to arrive at its bizarre premise—when she uses her security blanket, she can see into a fantasy world populated by imaginary friends who talk to her and tell her accurate predictions about financial futures that her daddy can use to get ahead at work. (No, we never see any of the imaginary gobbledygook, and, no, it is never explained how or why these insider-trading-esque secrets are being divulged to an unappealing pre-teen.) Takes way too long to get to the meat of the story, and even then, there’s no real conflict or resistance or comic opportunities involved; even the “showdown” that’s scheduled between Murphy and his rival (Church) fizzles out because the antagonist drops the ball in a big way before Murphy even gets a chance to choose his daughter over his job (and what a moral lesson that turns out to be…). Consistently unfunny in a painless way barring one aspect, which is that Church goes by the name Johnny Whitefeather and does hacky Native American shtick to impress the suits; at the end, someone reveals that he’s not actually Native American to the boardroom’s dismay, and my reaction was, “Did these people really think he was??” With Eddie’s tank on empty, and the story’s interests all muddled up (are little kids going to care about or even understand all that financial advisor material?), there’s just no point.

22/100