Imagine That

Imagine That is a 2009 American family comedy drama film starring Eddie Murphy, directed by Karey Kirkpatrick, and written by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. The film sets to focus on a workaholic dad named Evan Danielson who tries to better his relationship with his daughter, Olivia, whose imaginary world and friends becomes the secret to her father's success.

Plot
Like many busy professionals, Evan Danielson (Eddie Murphy) is so focused on his career that quality time with his young daughter, Olivia (Yara Shahidi), has fallen by the wayside. When an important promotion is suddenly within reach, stressed-out Evan starts to fall apart while trying to fend off his company rival, Johnny Whitefeather (Thomas Haden Church), but when little Olivia introduces him to the inhabitants of her imaginary land, Evan rediscovers his inner child and finds the answers to all his problems.

Why It Can't Imagine

 * 1) The entire premise of the film is completely bland, featuring a ridiculous and weak plot on where it focuses on a man who tries to use his daughter's imagination as a way to balance his career in order to get a promotion from his job.
 * 2) The "Googaa" blanket is a completely lame plot device that tries to enhance the story by trying to use it as a Magic 8 Ball to find answers but fails miserably as well as the name sounding very stupid.
 * 3) Johnny Whitefeather is an unlikable character as he does similar things like Evan (like trying to get a promotion) does except only instead of just a baby blanket, he relies on his nonsensical Native American idioms and also tries to force his son (like Evan forces his daughter) to also find his answers by making him drink excessive amounts of RedBull and using a $1000 Indian blanket.
 * 4) * Only to find out that his ancestry was mainly Finnish-Armenian and that his great-grandfather was only 1/4 of a Navajo, meaning he had almost no Indian blood in himself.
 * 5) As of BQ#1, Evan is an unlikable dad and is a complete jerk to his daughter, Olivia, refusing to spend time with her, and doing anything he can to steal her blanket just so that he can a solution to his problems.
 * 6) At one point in the film, Evan tries to brake into the house of where Olivia is having a sleep over just so he can get the blanket. Not only is this selfish, but is also a form of burglary that could have gotten Evan arrested. This scene even looks like a rip-off of Mr.Bean as it looks like something Mr.Bean would do.
 * 7) Terrible acting from half of the cast including Eddie Murphy himself.
 * 8) Awful humor and many unfunny jokes with almost no effort put into including Evan himself acting very childish through out the movie.
 * 9) Unnecessary product placement from Coca-Cola and Red Bull.
 * 10) While the entire purpose of the movie was to find solutions through imagination, what Evan could've done was get his daughter checked to a psychiatrist and convince her that her imaginary friends aren't real; while she did move on, the main case was just to get his daughter into reality but instead he decided to go with her plan as he irresponsibly used it for his job and caused some mischief for himself and his company.
 * 11) The film's title "Imagine That" isn't very clever and doesn't sound like a name of a movie but does make sense.
 * 12) Plot Hole: Despite not doing it, why hasn't Evan been investigated since he was accused of insider trading because his company questioned on where his business' information came from?
 * 13) Poor directing of Karey Kirkpatrick.
 * 14) * This is more understandable knowing that Karey Kirkpatrick directed his previous and next films, Over the Hedge and Smallfoot and Karey's direction of Over the Hedge and Smallfoot are pretty good.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) While the acting is terrible, Yara Shahidi, Nicole Ari Parker, and Martin Sheen do great on their character roles respectfully.
 * 2) The concept was quite interesting on paper, but if the film were to take it on a different approach, it would've been a better film.
 * 3) Even though Evan is an unlikable character, he does receive some character development on where his relationship with his daughter bettered and Olivia moved on from her imagination and looked at what reality will be to her.
 * 4) Shows a beautiful background view of what Colorado looks like.
 * 5) The soundtrack is decent from Mark Mancina.

Reception
Imagine That was received poorly by critics while many audiences gave it a mixed-to-negative reception. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 41% based on 120 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Despite a promising turn by newcomer Yara Shahidi, Imagine That is another pedestrian family comedy that squanders Eddie Murphy's comedic talents.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 54 out of 100, based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A-" on scale of A to F. The movie failed to reach its budget standards making it a box office bomb.

Trivia

 * Eddie Murphy himself stated that he disliked this film.
 * Though not related but shares similar elements to, another Eddie Murphy movie titled "A Thousand Words" shares some similar elements from this movie.
 * This is the last film that used Nickelodeon Movies "The Splat" logo.