“Imagine That” is not the family escape you want it to be, the only draw it will bring to kids is an opportunity to run around a theater and treat their father’s face like a jungle gym. Imagine That stars Eddie Murphy as Evan, a recently divorced dad that is more interested in his work than his child. It seems that ever since Liar Liar, this movie stereo type has become the standard. His daughter Olivia (Yara Shahidi) is a strange little girl with excessive attachment to her security blanket she calls a “googa.” This blanket allows her to see into a world of fantasy and stock tips.

These magical stock tips are what bring the father-daughter duo together in that loving way. As we come to find out, Even is up for a promotion at work and needs these tips to get ahead of his new co-worker, a 1/3 Native-American man named White-feather played by Thomas Haden Church(Spider man 3, Sideways). Thomas had a promising start in this role when his appearance alone was making me laugh, the bad thing was that this was the last laugh that would come from the once promising actor. So for laughs in this movie we would have to rely on Murphy and his imaginative daughter.

The imagination part of the film is where the real problems start come in this movie. In the the day and age of computer generated graphics, asking kids to imagine a fantasy world may be too much. I will take a moment to say that I don’t have kids, so all my judgment will come from observation of the children in my theater. With that said, there were a total of maybe seven laughs in this film, and I must say that I was distracted by worn out out parents walking their hordes of bored kids out of the theater.

The only thing that did save this film is it’s heart and that it had plenty of it. Too bad it was a recycled one.

I give Imagine That 1 “it’s better than Pluto Nash” out of 5.

by Ryan Davis