I have seen former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Eddie Murphy in a bunch of films, but most of them haven't been very good. This is the most recent film I've seen him in, and I've just watched it two years after its release. I didn't hear of it while it was playing in theatres, but since it was such a flop, that's not surprising. Unfortunately, "Imagine That" is basically yet another lacklustre piece of fluff starring Murphy. Watching it about 24 hours after "The Sweetest Thing", a 2002 romantic comedy which was ironically very bitter to me, I have to say that I think this 2009 release is a LOT better that that film (though comparing them does seem pretty ridiculous, since they're not the same kind of film), but it's still not a film I can praise too highly.
Evan Danielson is a financial executive who has a six year old daughter named Olivia, and she has a security blanket and likes to talk to her imaginary friends, since she doesn't seem to have any real ones. Since Evan focuses so much on his work, he tends to neglect his daughter. The financial executive was at the top of his company for eight years, but has finally been facing some competition lately since the arrival of Johnny Whitefeather. Evan's career is now going down the tubes, but as this is happening, he is introduced to his daughter's imaginary world, a world with her imaginary princess friends and their queen in it. He plays along, and finds that the solution to his recent career trouble may lie in Olivia's fantasy world! However, there's more in his life than just his job, and he may have to decide what's more important, his work or his family?
This movie is supposed to be partially a comedy and partially a drama, and the comedy aspect definitely fails for the most part. The part that made me laugh the hardest was probably Evan singing in a high voice at one point while in Olivia's imaginary world, and hardly anything else made me laugh at all. An example of something I didn't find very funny was the two times Olivia screams when deprived of her security blanket, and Thomas Haden Church in the role of Johnny Whitefeather doesn't do much for the film, either. Parts of Evan's rant about his daughter's drawings during a meeting are mildly amusing, but not the poop part. There are touching moments in "Imagine That", so I guess the movie doesn't COMPLETELY fail as a drama, but the drama is still not good enough to make up for the lacklustre humour. Those flaws plus the fairly uninteresting premise make this a pretty insignificant family flick, and I just MIGHT be able to rate it 6/10 instead of 5, but it's still far from a must-see.
Evan Danielson is a financial executive who has a six year old daughter named Olivia, and she has a security blanket and likes to talk to her imaginary friends, since she doesn't seem to have any real ones. Since Evan focuses so much on his work, he tends to neglect his daughter. The financial executive was at the top of his company for eight years, but has finally been facing some competition lately since the arrival of Johnny Whitefeather. Evan's career is now going down the tubes, but as this is happening, he is introduced to his daughter's imaginary world, a world with her imaginary princess friends and their queen in it. He plays along, and finds that the solution to his recent career trouble may lie in Olivia's fantasy world! However, there's more in his life than just his job, and he may have to decide what's more important, his work or his family?
This movie is supposed to be partially a comedy and partially a drama, and the comedy aspect definitely fails for the most part. The part that made me laugh the hardest was probably Evan singing in a high voice at one point while in Olivia's imaginary world, and hardly anything else made me laugh at all. An example of something I didn't find very funny was the two times Olivia screams when deprived of her security blanket, and Thomas Haden Church in the role of Johnny Whitefeather doesn't do much for the film, either. Parts of Evan's rant about his daughter's drawings during a meeting are mildly amusing, but not the poop part. There are touching moments in "Imagine That", so I guess the movie doesn't COMPLETELY fail as a drama, but the drama is still not good enough to make up for the lacklustre humour. Those flaws plus the fairly uninteresting premise make this a pretty insignificant family flick, and I just MIGHT be able to rate it 6/10 instead of 5, but it's still far from a must-see.