Taking Your Kids to the Movies – Imagine That, 2009

Seeing Eddie Murphy on the screen can’t but leave you with a smile. He’s bigger than life. He generates charisma, and he has a self-knowing warmth that extends from his days on SNL right through until Imagine That, his latest small masterpiece.

This is a movie about an everyday man. He’s that father who’s preoccupied with his job, the man who worked so hard to rise in the company, but he’s also the man who had a wife who couldn’t deal with it anymore so she left him. The problem is that he has a special young daughter named Olivia. She needs him, but Eddie Murphy will soon discover that he needs her more.

In this movie, Eddie Murphy is overly involved in his career. He’s a financial advisor who discovers that his daughter has predictive powers about stocks.

Does this draw him closer? Yes, of course. Is it for right reasons? No. He gets closer to Olivia because he wants to win at the game of money. This movie is a set up for the great drama that working parents have during a divorce. “I’m working for you,” but a child knows that he’s working for himself.

Imagine That deliciously documents how Eddie Murphy negotiates with his daughter, plays with his daughter, and finds the answers to the future. In doing this, Eddie Murphy realizes that the goal he really is searching for is in Olivia’s heart. This is a movie that every father and daughter should see together because they are almost guaranteed to enjoy it and take the movie’s message to heart.