Imagine That

 
by KYW's Bill Wine

Eddie Murphy has starred in good family movies (The Nutty Professor, Shrek, Meet Dave) and bad (Norbit, The Haunted Mansion, Daddy Day Care).  His latest is neither as good as his best nor as bad as his worst.  Which is to say that it is a fitfully amusing entertainment for the family audience.
 
Imagine that.
 
Imagine That is a pleasant fantasy-comedy about a severely distracted, workaholic single Denver dad who's about to learn a valuable lesson about what's important.
 
Murphy plays Evan Danielson, a successful financial executive estranged from his wife (Nicole Ari Parker), whose career is suddenly in a downward spiral.
   
Then he discovers that his seven-year-old daughter Olivia, played by Yara Shahidi, whom he rarely has time for, has created an imaginary universe, complete with princesses and a queen, in which solutions to posed financial questions about stock market investments come easily and presciently when she's under the security blanket she calls Goo-Gaa.
 
Needless to say, these uncannily correct prognostications arouse Evan's curiosity and become understandably valuable, if not crucial, to his performance at work, especially at a time when his retirement-age boss is looking to name a successor.  
  
His main competition for the position is one Johnny Whitefeather, a pretentious, mystically inclined Native American financial hotshot played colorfully by Thomas Haden Church.
   
Suddenly, for all the wrong reasons, Evan turns into an involved father with a uniquely self-serving spin on what constitutes quality time.
 
The inspired actor -- comedic (Bowfinger) or dramatic (Dreamgirls) -- that Murphy can be is not the one who shows up in Imagine That.  Rather, it's the relaxed and understated Murphy who can turn on the charm when needed, has comedic abilities so prodigious that there's no need to trot them out just to remind us, and who has gotten both comfortable and skilled acting opposite children.
 
Ex-screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick -- who wrote the scripts for such children's movies as Charlotte's Web, Chicken Run, James and the Giant Peach, and The Spiderwick Chronicles, and wrote and directed Over the Hedge -- works from a screenplay by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson that offers a clever and original premise, a patient buildup, and a resonant metaphor for sharing kids' fantasies and parent-child intimacy, but that then loses its grip on the tone and paints itself into a narrative corner that then calls for a decidedly generic and overfamiliar climax and resolution.
 
However, Kirkpatrick makes the brave and (in this case) wise choice to ignore the temptation to jump on the CGI special-effects bandwagon. 
 
Instead, he lets Olivia's invisible playmates remain invisible so that his young audience can instead employ their own imaginations.  Nicely done.
  
Meanwhile, an involving story and a fair share of kid-friendly, Eddie-ready slapstick keeps the young audience tuned in and turned on.
 
Throw in a touching father-daughter relationship and the adorable natural Shahidi, and you've got a fable about parenting that represents a respectable multi-generational divertissement that you can take the little ones to.

So we'll invest in 2½ stars out of 4.  Swearing by its every frame and dismissing it out of hand are both unimaginable, but Imagine That is a sweet-cute-and-giggly-to-boot kidflick.