Imagine That
Written by Ed Solomon & Chris Matheson
Directed by Karey Kirkpatrick
Starring Eddie Murphy, Yara Shahidi, Thomas Haden Church, Nicole Ari Parker, and Ronny Cox
Rated PG
Opening 12 June 2009
The fantasy elements of this movie are almost non-existent, easily overlooked by the average viewer, but to anyone who’s ever worked on Wall Street, Imagine That is high fantasy.
Brief review: It’s a sweet, endearing movie. But it stumbles a few times. Why doesn’t Evan’s character grow as much as he ought to? How does Olivia make such wonderful financial predictions? And what happened to Rick? (Trish’s boyfriend, who’s sitting next to her at the concert, but is completely absent minutes later, when Evan has won everything he ever wanted, and he and Trish walk off-screen with Olivia.)
The music is great, the casting is wonderful (both the leads and supporting cast), the sets are great (Evan’s home is incredible), and the film is nearly believable (from the cut-throat business to the way the characters act). I just wanted a little more.
Longer review (with spoilers) below:
Evan Danielson (Eddie Murphy) is a financial adviser, managing large sums of money and making shrewd trading decisions every day. But he’s rattled by the new hotshot at his company, Johnny Whitefeather (Thomas Haden Church). While Evan makes his investment decisions based on sound research and experience, Johnny seems to pull them from thin air, his pseudo-Native American razzle-dazzle lending a New Age mystique to an otherwise staid, button-down industry. But Johnny, too, gets results.
The other half of Evan’s life (well, it isn’t really half, but it ought to be) is that he’s a divorced father sharing custody of his seven-year-old daughter Olivia (Yara Shahidi). Olivia is a mix of older than seven and younger than seven, but the key plot point is that she won’t give up her security blanket, the Goo-Gaa. He’s a distant father, viewing Olivia as a distraction (“I thought you wanted to have kids,” his ex-wife Trish [Nicole Ari Parker] says. “I didn’t realize it would be this hard,” he replies), but he’s by no means a bad father. He’s just trying to switch weeks with his ex-wife for custody of Olivia, but Trish, too, is having a busy week, and won’t let him trade. “Remember,” she says, “Olivia’s vaccination is Thursday, a birthday party/sleep-over is Friday, and the Fall Sing concert is Saturday.”
Evan’s having a bad week. Johnny’s poaching his clients, it’s his week with Olivia, and there are rumors the boss is about to sell the company. Olivia winds up in his office one day, and creates her seven-year-old’s artwork all over the notes and reports Evan had prepared for a meeting. Johnny, being smooth, is wooing away the clients, and Evan loses it, flipping out while interpreting Olivia’s drawings as investment advice. In her doodlings, he reads an impending merger between two unrelated companies, the impending downfall of an industry leader, and more.
When the boss, Tom Stevens (Ronny Cox), calls Evan in to his office after the meeting, Evan knows he’s going to be fired. And Tom is confused, but he’s not going to fire Evan. Rather, he wants to know how Evan knew everything he proposed in the meeting: the merger is going through, the industry leader was caught in massive fraud, and more. Evan isn’t sure how he knew, but he knows Olivia knows. “It’s the Goo-Gaa,” says Olivia. “Rub it on your cheek, and then put it over your head, and spin around, and you’ll be able to enter” her fantasy world.
And this is the point where I was expecting a fantasy movie: Olivia tells him of her fantasy world, populated with princesses, a queen, a dragon, and more. And while Evan learns to “see” the fantasy world with Olivia (and we’re never sure he can actually see the world, versus simply humoring his daughter), she passing along the princesses’ statements, which Evan easily interprets as financial advice that is always spot on. Evan goes from very good to absolutely stellar in a day or two. “Is he seeing a psychic?” Tom asks Evan’s secretary. “Is he a psychic himself?” And with his success, he grows closer to his daughter. Evan makes predictions that are at odds with experts, including financial guru Dante D’Enzo (Martin Sheen), who earlier in the movie “is always on that channel. That’s the one channel we don’t turn off,” (think Jim Cramer’s influence combined with Warren Bufffet’s talent). And he’s right.
By Thursday, he takes Olivia for her vaccine, and then is willing to sit through a horrible-looking dinner to humor his princess, and teaches her to sing for the impending concert. On Friday, however, he learns the identity of the soon-to-be owner: Dante D’Enzo. Evan and Johnny really have been competing this week: to replace Tom as the head of the company under its new owner. And there’s one final test: a huge book is handed to each of them. “I’m in China now,” says Dante on a video conference, “but I’ll be there in 17 hours, so you have 17 hours to go through that book and convince me you’re the man for the job.”
Johnny is more rattled by Evan’s success than he’s let on. He’s been spying on Evan, and draws upon his Native American roots to have a blanket blessed. Johnny knows that blankets and vision quests are possible, and that children are much better attuned to them. So he goes home with his blessed blanket, wakes his son, and (with the help of a lot of Red Bull) forces the son to “go on a vision quest” and help him decide which stocks in the briefing book are good bets or bad.
Evan, meanwhile, flips out, having forgotten the party/sleep-over. But it’s okay, Trish has taken Olivia. “But I need her. I need my Goo-Gaa!” And Evan loses it. Well, he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, convinces everyone close to him that he is insane, and even pisses off Olivia, who has been growing ever more attached to him through their joint journeys to the fantasy world. And here we find another flaw in the movie: never, not once, does Evan say “I love you,” to his daughter. Not even when he seems to have actually learned that emotion. There were many, many opportunities for character growth, and while we get outward signs of them from Evan, they are none of them real enough to be convincing (like the never-seen fantasy world).
Evan goes home, works on his presentation, and unconsciously realizes he doesn’t need the Goo-Gaa. Dante shows up for the meeting, Johnny does his act, which Warren Buffet-Dante sees through in an instant (“I’ve never heard such an unctuous load of crap”), and suddenly the dream job is Evan’s to lose. But then he realizes it’s Saturday, and even though Olivia said she didn’t want him to come to the concert, he understands he has to be there. Evan leaves his briefing book and heads out to the concert, arriving in time to give Olivia the heart she needs for her solo, they reconcile, and wave goodbye to the fantasy land, at which point, on a completely calm day, the leaves in the overhanging trees are pushed aside by an unfelt breeze (Olivia says it’s the princesses departing, and Evan’s expression shows us he suddenly, truly, believes in them).
And Dante appears, Evan has won the job, and all is well with the world.
Brief review: It’s a sweet, endearing movie. But it stumbles a few times. Why doesn’t Evan’s character grow as much as he ought to? How does Olivia make such wonderful financial predictions? And what happened to Rick? (Trish’s boyfriend, who’s sitting next to her at the concert, but is completely absent minutes later, when Evan has won everything he ever wanted, and he and Trish walk off-screen with Olivia.)
The music is great, the casting is wonderful (both the leads and supporting cast), the sets are great (Evan’s home is incredible), and the film is nearly believable (from the cut-throat business to the way the characters act). I just wanted a little more.