Bruce McBroom / Twentieth Century Fox Review in a Hurry: Eddie Murphy plays an Eddie Murphy-shaped spaceship named Dave, piloted by a team of tiny aliens led by a miniature, English-accented Eddie Murphy, who's still learning how to control the craft. Though the story starts off as a mess and only gets worse, there's some solid physical comedy.
The Bigger Picture: Aliens haven't been portrayed quite like this since the heyday of Ed Wood: They wear gray bodysuits, speak English and manage to be confused by the most basic of bodily functions, despite their technological advancement. Oh, and they come to destroy Earth, before learning valuable lessons about compassion. The only present-day twist is that they've learned all about Earth from Google, which occasionally gives them unreliable results.
These ludicrous Lilliputians have landed on Earth to find a lost orb that has the power to suck the planet's oceans dry. They find it in the possession of Josh (Austyn Myers), a young, fatherless boy who bonds with the man he thinks is named Dave after the spaceship thwarts a robbery. When Josh's mother, Gina (Elizabeth Banks), starts to fall for Dave as well, his crew begins to experience unfamiliar feelings.
Think of this as Coming to Earth with Murphy not only playing a cultural fish out of water but also an unfamiliar and uncoordinated body. Scenes like the one where Dave wrestles with both a sweater and the English language in an Old Navy store are really pretty funny, but the film falls apart once it tries to become an action movie and force a big climax.
Murphy's still got chops, but unfortunately doesn't seem to care much about the scripts he picks.
The 180 A Second Opinion: If you walk out of the movie 25 minutes or so before it's over, it's a laugh riot.