is it me?

Last night, In the spirit of family movie night, I agreed to watch Meet Dave. On one hand, it was one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen. I missed the first 5 minutes, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have made a huge difference. The premise: ridiculous. A planet in need of energy wanted to drain all of the earth's oceans. These aliens were inches tall and their spaceship was designed to look like a human. Dressed in an all white suit because the only visual record they had of earth were broadcasts of Fantasy Island. Galaxy Quest did a way better job with that premise. These aliens were devoid of emotion, but being on earth and interacting with a very trusting woman who hit Dave (Eddie Murphy, whose face has gotten even more disturbingly elastic) with her car and her "I think I'm a loser" son, unlocked and unleashed all sorts of typical human behavior, like discovering a secret love of the Village People, hairdressing, ghetto speak, and the need to excel at carnival games. Suddenly, members of the crew turned gay, fashionista, homeboy, and the women's uniforms got exceedingly shorter and tighter. Being a New Yorker, I have to mention that if you hit someone with a car, you don't invite them into your apartment for homemade breakfast. Nor is your apartment, in a tenement walk-up in Soho, filled with 6 or so spacious rooms.

Dave did the most shameless commercial promos I've ever seen in a movie: he must have repeated "Welcome to Old Navy" 30 times at least. The good cop/bad cop, we're being visited by aliens, the maniacal take-over by Ed Helms, channeling Evil, all were so painfully derivative, you'd think it would be hard to watch. But no. We watched until the very end. And laughed out loud through much of it.

So, is my taste slipping? At this point one could argue that I don't have taste anymore. But, in the end, it was a satisfying movie night and everyone was happy.