“Ethel Thayer. It sounds like I’m lisping, doesn’t it?”
— Norman Thayer Jr.

A superb actor lacks the ability to act. He or she will not show any signs of acting and will embody the character instead of plainly acting out the screenplay. You could say a good actor needs to be possessed by his/her character, unwilling to be who they were but only willing to be all that the film asks of them. The acting part should be taken out of acting.

Now, let me present you On Golden Pond. Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda and Doug McKeon (yes, the then-little boy deserves top billing). This is not Henry Fonda we’re looking at, it’s Norman Thayer Jr. Katharine Hepburn? We’ve only got Ethel here. All these superb actors are the personifications of their characters, instead of just being the characters’s three-dimensional marionettes.

On the other end of the acting scope we’ve got Bride Wars, a far cry from On Golden Pond‘s grandness. You want to see “acting”? Go watch this Anne Hathaway—Kate Hudson melodrama, and all you’ll see is actors trying to be what the script tells them to be. Be furious, so they act furious. Be loveable, so they try to be loveable. Make this film look better than its screenplay, plot and director think it can be, … well, that one you won’t see.

The girls in this film are self-centered, egotistical and just plain dumb, and their fiancés have too little emotion and significance to them to even merit a description. Perhaps this is all the intent of the creators, but I’m not sure that 20th Century Fox consciously set out to produce a mess of a film. With a rewrite they could’ve added some intelligence to it all, perhaps providing these two Academy Award-nominated actresses with some substance. Why is it that filmmakers think that chick-flicks and romantic comedies have to be mind-numbingly stupid to succeed?

Why don’t they just take after Rumor Has It…?¹ It’s a film with its own set of flaws, I have to admit to that, but overall, the spirit behind it all, the feistiness of some of its characters, the melodramatics — they all strike me as highly entertaining, rather than monotonous and incredibly boring.

All right, I wish Shirley MacLaine would stop wasting her time on these types of films, and I hope that Jennifer Aniston one day realises that she’s wasting her talent by playing Rachel Green over-and-over-and-over. Also, I myself realised that Mark Ruffalo is a pretty replaceable actor in anything he has ever played, which isn’t all that of a compliment I guess.

But Ruffalo shouldn’t complain, because at least he’s still a bankable actor, unlike Eddie Murphy. It’s not a revelation of any sort to say that Eddie Murphy has lost much of the charm he once possessed. Oh, I enjoyed watching Meet Dave, I might have even laughed, giggled and smiled throughout the whole ninety minutes. Nevertheless, for me to do this I had to surpress any critical thought, because let’s be honest, Meet Dave can only be classified as horrible when critical thought is applied.

There is actual comedy in this comedy film, but you’ll have to search for it. Most of the scenes are bad slapstick, accompanied by terrible dialogue and giggle-inducing acting. Eddie Murphy is trying to act like a robot throughout it all, but all the while you’re thinking, “Hey, this is what Eddie Murphy looks like when he’s trying to look like an Eddie Murphy-robot.” The “live-action” Eddie Murphy miniature in the film is an improvement, but not a big one.

Here is the twist to my story: is this film trying to be more than what it really is? The dialogue, terrible as it is, seems to fit perfectly into it all. Somehow, the acting seems natural in the context of this film, as does the Eddie Murphy-robot acting. Meet Dave isn’t trying to be a smart comedy like The Princess Bride², and in that setting I’ve watched and reviewed the film. Two stars seems a bit high for a film as crappy as this one, but something has to be said for a film acknowledging its own idiocy and embracing the fact that it’s nothing more than just pure entertainment.

Film ratings

Film	Studio	Grade	Stars
Breakfast With Scot	Regent Entertainment	7.3
The Bucket List	Warner Bros.	8.3
Shelter	TLA Releasing	8.6
Rumor Has It…	Warner Bros.	8.5
Passengers	TriStar Pictures	7.0
When Harry Met Sally…	Columbia Pictures	9.0
Zack and Miri Make a Porno	The Weinstein Co.	8.1
On Golden Pond	Universal Studios	9.6
Bride Wars	20th Century Fox	7.0
Meet Dave	20th Century Fox	7.7