What's Worse Than Getting Caught With A Tranny?

You'd probably get a lot of different answers for that question. But ask Eddie Murphy and he'd probably tell you Meet Dave. Meet Dave is the new (soon-to-be-gone) Eddie Murphy movie about 100 martians that come to Earth in a human-shaped spaceship... that looks like Eddie Murphy. It's your classic fish-out-of-water, martian-comes-to-Earth-and-falls-in-love piece of garbage. So pretty much Earth Girls Are Easy minus the entertainment value.

I refuse to acknowledge that 80's fashion is back until I see somebody wearing a black and blue paisley leather suit with leather gloves and a silk scarf. Stop kidding yourself.
What does that have to do with a tranny? Not much. But you may remember that back in 1997, Eddie Murphy was stopped by police with a transvestite prostitute. We all know how that feels. The following months were a PR nightmare for the star that hurt the opening of his next movie. Holy Man opened 5th at the box office on a little over 2000 screens and made $5.1mn -- which is bad but not horrible given the situation. Holy Man also scored a miserable 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.

How did Meet Dave fare in its opening weekend? The short answer: "Eddie Murphy should stick to voice acting". This crappy Earth Girls Are Easy ripoff was showing on about 3000 screens (50% more than Holy Man) and finished SEVENTH with $5.25mn. OK, I know it's harder to score a hit in the summer... but he couldn't do better than Steve Carell's sloppy fourths (Get Smart has been out for a month). This won't gross more than $25mn domestically and Eddie Murphy movies haul in $104mn on average. I mean, I'd expect a piss poor performance like that out of somebody like Jason Statham... but Eddie Murphy? I've offered similar advice to Leelee Sobieski; FIRE YOUR AGENT, EDDIE!