The featured comment today calls this "the worst movie of the year" which is quite clearly wrong. In fact, it is not a "bad" movie at all, but could have been quite a bit better. It is hazardous to judge without actually knowing, but since it is an Eddie Murphy movie I am guessing that some of the unnecessarily slow or silly scenes were left in because of him. Cut it down by about 10 minutes and improve the flow of the story and it has a quite good message.
Eddie Murphy is hot-shot financial professional Evan Danielson, in Denver. Rumors are the boss is retiring soon and Evan sees himself as the leading candidate to manage this Western division.
His chief competition is Thomas Haden Church as Johnny Whitefeather, who uses his Native American background and lots of double-speak to convince others that he has some special gift for analysis and investment advice. We find out later that his heritage may have been a bit overblown.
The 3rd key character is 7-year-old Yara Shahidi as Olivia, Evan's cute and bright daughter. She hasn't quite turned loose of her security blanket and this at times causes trouble at home and at school. Evan and her mother are divorced, and we can quickly see that Evan's career ambitions usually command his full attention, and his relationship with his daughter comes in a very distant second.
That in fact if the thrust of the story, the father/daughter relationship and how Evan might repair it. In the end the story is a good one, the movie is just bogged down by its own weight at times.
SPOILERS: Olivia has imaginary friends, princesses, but one night when she is in Evan's home office, and hears him discussing certain investments, Olivia tells him which ones are good and which are bad, supposedly told to her by the imaginary princesses. The next day everything she said turns out correct. Soon Evan is using his daughter and her maybe not imaginary friends to predict winners for him. His own moment comes on a Saturday when the big boss wants him demonstrate why he should be the new manager, but Evan leaves the meeting, he goes to a school singalong that Olivia had been preparing for. This does two things for him, it repairs the relationship with his daughter, and it gains the respect of the big boss. The new job is his, and he has a new perspective on work life and family life.
Eddie Murphy is hot-shot financial professional Evan Danielson, in Denver. Rumors are the boss is retiring soon and Evan sees himself as the leading candidate to manage this Western division.
His chief competition is Thomas Haden Church as Johnny Whitefeather, who uses his Native American background and lots of double-speak to convince others that he has some special gift for analysis and investment advice. We find out later that his heritage may have been a bit overblown.
The 3rd key character is 7-year-old Yara Shahidi as Olivia, Evan's cute and bright daughter. She hasn't quite turned loose of her security blanket and this at times causes trouble at home and at school. Evan and her mother are divorced, and we can quickly see that Evan's career ambitions usually command his full attention, and his relationship with his daughter comes in a very distant second.
That in fact if the thrust of the story, the father/daughter relationship and how Evan might repair it. In the end the story is a good one, the movie is just bogged down by its own weight at times.
SPOILERS: Olivia has imaginary friends, princesses, but one night when she is in Evan's home office, and hears him discussing certain investments, Olivia tells him which ones are good and which are bad, supposedly told to her by the imaginary princesses. The next day everything she said turns out correct. Soon Evan is using his daughter and her maybe not imaginary friends to predict winners for him. His own moment comes on a Saturday when the big boss wants him demonstrate why he should be the new manager, but Evan leaves the meeting, he goes to a school singalong that Olivia had been preparing for. This does two things for him, it repairs the relationship with his daughter, and it gains the respect of the big boss. The new job is his, and he has a new perspective on work life and family life.