Eddie Murphy’s Meet Dave comes out today… You may have been unfortunate enough to see the trailers–something about tiny aliens landing on Earth and trying to learn about humanity by going around in a human-sized robot.  Both the head alien and the robot are played by Eddie Murphy.  Murphy seems to be double cast without the aid of prosthetics, yet this still doesn’t look any better than last year’s horrific Norbit.  The only potential reason to see this is to watch the sexy Elizabeth Banks (Norbit had Thandie Newton), but even that has very little potential.

Meet Dave, I’m sure, will continue a disturbing trend in 2008 “comedies.”  Just this past weekend, I had the misfortune of catching the most recent efforts from Adam Sandler and Mike Myers.  While both films have been out for a few weeks already, I hope this blog reaches you in time so you don’t waste your time on either one of them.

In You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Sandler is He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Messed-With, an Israeli anti-terrorist superhero who wants to move to America and make everyone “silky smooth.”  Unlike the flying alcoholic Hancock, this superhero is completely unbelievable.  Within the first few minutes, Zohan catches both a hacky sack AND a fish with his butt cheeks.  I kept expecting Zohan’s little buddy to wake up, because everything in these first few minutes had to be a dream about how awesome he thinks Zohan is–surely they can’t seriously expect us to believe this!

Well, apparently, they can… and don’t call me Shirley.  Within the first 5 minutes, I figured I was going to hate this movie.  Then, there were about two dozen hummus “jokes” crammed into the next 10 minutes, and I was sure.  In fact, I only laughed once at a little joke involving Kevin Nealon and three unconscious trouble makers.

I want to know what kind of dirt Sandler has on John Turturro… There’s no other explanation why an actor like Turturro (The Big Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing, Quiz Show) would be in this, Mr. Deeds AND Anger Management.  He plays The Phantom, the Green Goblin terrorist to Zohan’s Spidey.  The two fight each other, but by the end join forces to battle a group of bigoted rednecks led by an unrecognizable Dave Matthews.  I seriously feel dirty talking about this piece of crap for this long.

The Love Guru presents the Guru Pitka, Myers’ latest human comedic character creation (I’m still trying to forget The Cat in the Hat).  I remember enjoying the Austin Powers films, especially Goldmember which I probably watched about a dozen times one summer with a bunch of college friends.  However, Guru makes me want to go back and rewatch those films to check and see if they actually were funny or if it was just the situation in which I watched them.

Pitka is the #2 Guru in the world, behind Oprah-endorsed Deepak Chopra, and he longs to be #1.  He takes on the challenge of fixing the marriage of hockey star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) and his wife Prudence (Meagan Good) in time for Darren to win the Stanley Cup.  Once Prudence left and started dating rival player Jacques “La Coq” Grande (Justin Timerlake), Darren’s loses his game.  Verne Troyer, Jessica Alba & (for some reason) Sir Ben Kingsley are also in this film but I’m already sick of describing the plot.

The Guru Pitka is mostly just an annoyance.  The few times he made me smile were the silly sitar-accompanied songs (especially “9 to 5″ during the opening credits), but mostly I just kept rolling my eyes at all of his trademarked self-help-isms and his chanting of “Mariska Hargitay.”  The supporting roles and cameos were a mixed bag–Mariska Hargitay especially made me laugh, but it was Timberlake who won this movie its single star.  He’s actually really funny as the appropriately named French-Canadian.  He loves Celine Dion and serenades Prudence pretty badly–but it’s so bad, it’s good.  The Bollywood-esque finale is actually kind of fun (although Alba’s “singing” is brutal to listen to) and the film’s funniest line comes from one of Troyer’s outtakes shown during the end credits.

Basically, these two films took over three hours of my life that I can never get back… but at least they gave me some fodder for another two-fer review.

Zohan
Guru