Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Eddie Murphy's latest family comedy, "Meet Dave," traps this extraordinarily gifted performer in an inferior production like a dragonfly in amber. It's hard to imagine what appealed to him in this tepid project other than the chance to perform multiple roles.

Here he's both a robotic human-shaped spaceship and the dignified extraterrestrial commander of its miniature crew.

The film's limited humor derives from the spacecraft's mechanical attempts to mimic human behavior and the commander's efforts to comprehend the puzzling folkways of New York City's population. He's baffled, for example, that Earth's global information databases would have such flippant names as Google and Yahoo. And why do the inhabitants cross the street when the signal clearly says "Don't Walk"?

The aliens' mission is to recover a lost space probe that was intended to suck our planet's oceans dry to save their dying world. The object, resembling a handball-sized meteorite, has crashed into the bedroom of a star-gazing grade schooler (Austin Lynd Myers) with a single mom, Gina (Elizabeth Banks), and bully problems.

As the robot seeks out their apartment, he steps into the path of Gina's car. She takes the disoriented robot home to recover from the effects of the collision, nervously accepting all his off-kilter behavior as the result of her brain-rattling accident.

This leads to much knucklehead comedy based on the sort of potty humor and puns that tickle 8-year-olds. When Gina asks Dave to clear the table he sweeps the dishes aside with his arm.

Meanwhile, the ship's commander begins to warm to the perky widow, inspiring confusing pangs of an emotion called jealousy in his junior officer (Gabrielle Union).

Under the influence of human behavior, the rest of his disciplined crew begins to carry on like stereotypical humans, jiving, swishing, flirting and sulking, putting their mission in peril.

Murphy, whose experiences with live-action comedy have been spotty for a decade, doesn't seem to be having much fun. He's stiffly expressionless as the humanoid spacecraft, and not much livelier as the craft's tiny commander. The script, from Rob Greenberg ("Frasier") and Bill Corbett ("Mystery Science Theater 3000") is sadly lacking in inspiration, and director Brian Robbins doesn't deliver the zany bad taste he brought to "Norbit."

Even as timewasters go, this is a waste of time.