MOVIE REVIEWS

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Starship Blooper | Meet Dave

by FilmGordon, July 11, 2008



ONCE UPON A TIME, Eddie Murphy was one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. After a recent string of cinematic stink-bombs, his days as a credible comic actor may have come to an end.



In his latest film, “Meet Dave,” Murphy plays yet another dual role as captain of an alien spaceship . . . and the spaceship, himself. After crash landing on Liberty Island, Captain Dave and his crew have to locate a missing orb that will provide Earth’s water and salt supply to their beleaguered planet. With a limited power supply and no clue where to begin, the crew has their work cut out for them.



If the film would have remained faithful to the concept, there was an outside chance that this story could have worked. But like the best laid plans of mice and men, Director Brian Robbins and Murphy clearly had other ideas. Only someone with his comic genius could conjure up the imagination and skill to show an alien spaceship/person taking his first steps in human form. Indeed there is much comedy in Murphy’s physical comedy, but instead of further exploring his comedic skill, the filmmakers choose to focus on stereotypical, silly goofy humor. >>Read More

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The Wrath Of Khan

by Richard von Busack, metroactive.com


CONSIDERING THE RECENT HISTORICAL revision of Genghis Khan's reputation, one looked forward to "Mongol," the first half of Sergei Bodrov's projected two-part epic about the master of a continent. What would we learn from the story of this much-maligned horseman, previously considered the epitome of barbarism and power-politics?



The West has some explaining to do. For instance, in 1932, MGM made "The Mask of Fu Manchu," with Boris Karloff in yellow-face makeup in search of the fabled mask and scimitar of Genghis Khan, which would enslave all of Asia. And then there's the matter of John Wayne's "The Conqueror," about which more in a minute.



Also, "Mongol" comes out in a film summer that hasn't been unveiling many vistas. Despite the hopes that Westerns would be revived by the success of 3:10 to Yuma, there aren't any this summer, unless you count the Aug. 7–8 revival of The Naked Spur and Broken Arrow at the Stanford Theatre. Whatever else goes wrong in "Mongol," it does have real estate in it. The Kazakhstan and Mongolian landscapes are wide-open spaces lined with quaking aspens and coiled loops of rivers, shining in the approaching evening. >>Read More