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Getting in touch with his PG side, Eddie Murphy is
into continued makeover mode navigating the hurdles of perplexed
fatherhood and ruthless corporate warfare simultaneously,
in Imagine That. This bad parenting cautionary tale finds
Murphy unleashing his own inner child, while picking up
a useful skill or two from a precocious offspring.***
Murphy is Evan, a corporate heavy hitter and estranged
father to young schoolgirl Olivia (Yara Shahidi), who is
being raised by her single mom Trish (Nicole Ari Parker).
When Olivia fails to adjust to school because she withdraws
into conversations with a blanket called Goo-Gaa that she
refuses to part with in class, the unhappy girl is sent
to live with her extremely reluctant dad.***
Evan is the sort of emotionally absentee father who
is a full time workaholic and simply not into the who parenting
thing. In other words, a pretending-to-listen kind of dad
who is more concerned about magnesium futures and their
relationship to Bolivian currency fluctuations in Western
metallurgy, than cooling his heels for some enthusiastic
kid chef cooked up chocolate an d ketchup with a side order
of pancakes for dinner.***
When boisterous office rival Johnny Whitefeather (Thomas
Haden Church) threatens to corral a position Evan was counting
on, the shamelessly calculating dad puts Olivia's magically
inclined blanket to work predicting stock market shifts,
and without benefit of any insider trading maneuvers. But
Olivia is soon wise to her father's suspiciously frequent
play dates with his clairvoyant kid, and seemingly more
of an attachment to the blanket than to her. And she's got
a few lessons of her own in mind, to teach her misbehaving
parent.***
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