It comes as no surprise that another Eddie Murphy movie has flopped at the box office. One could tell by watching the trailers for Meet Dave that it was already dead-on-arrival. The sci-fi comedy flick brought in a lousy $5.3 million over the weekend to debut in 7th place.

The plot description of Meet Dave makes you wonder how it made it to production with the thousands upon thousands of scripts that are turned down in Hollywood each month.

A massive fireball from space hits New York’s Central Park and an ordinary man emerges unscathed. The man turns out to be a spaceship operated by 100 human-looking aliens who are one-quarter inch tall and seeking a way to save their planet; complications ensue when their captain falls in love with an Earth woman who’s always picked losers for previous romances.

Murphy, who was box office gold in the 90’s with sequel hits like Dr. Doolittle and The Nutty Professor, has fallen hard at the box office the past decade when being counted on to be the major star in a film. Eddie’s films, besides lending his voice to the Shrek series and a good-not-great performance in Dreamgirls, have been one big bust after another.

In the past decade Murphy has been in such flops as Bowfinger, Showtime, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, I Spy, Daddy Daycare and Norbit.

IMDB lists the production costs of Meet Dave at $60 million. Next weekend’s box office take will be less than 50% of the $5.3 million it brought in its opening weekend. This film is going to have to do extremely well overseas or else it is going to finish several million dollars in the red.

Perhaps Eddie has lost his magic touch that led to several blockbusters in the 80’s and 90’s or maybe he is just a lot better suited to play a supporting character in larger budget films.