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As I wrote Monday in my post about Fox's new flop, "Meet Dave," the studio wrongly tried to pretend that the Eddie Murphy movie wasn't a sci-fi comedy, even ditching its original title, "Starship Dave." One reason why: Fox's Tom Rothman believes that sci-fi comedies are box-office poison. To prove his point, when we were at lunch not long ago, Rothman stumped me when he challenged me to come up with a sci-fi comedy that had been a bona fide hit.

I guess I should bring a few of our readers along to our next lunch, that is, if Tom is still speaking to me. Either our readers are considerably smarter than me or had a little more time to do some research. Or perhaps both. Either way, they've been filling up our comments box, doing a pretty good job of demolishing Rothman's case--or at least expanding the notion of what constitutes a sci-fi comedy. So the next time you hear someone write off the genre as commercially untenable, here are a few savvy comebacks (and a chance to see a wonderfully funny scene from the sci-fi comedy classic, "Galaxy Quest"):

   

Eddie Murphy: No one wanted to 'Meet Dave'

Eddie Murphy has pulled off an almost unprecedented achievement with "Meet Dave." He's delivered a movie that even 20th Century Fox couldn't market.

Buried in bad reviews, the Brian Robbins-directed "Meet Dave" barely grossed $5 million over the weekend, making it a contender, along with "Speed Racer," as the summer's top flop. For the past several years, Fox has been the marvel of the movie industry, having had more success with more awful movies than anyone in Hollywood. As I noted in my blog last Friday, with the exception of this spring's Dr. Seuss movie, "Horton Hears a Who," Fox has released 16 consecutive movies since last summer that have earned such awful reviews that they haven't even hit the 50 mark on Rotten Tomatoes, the minimal grade the online review aggregator gives for an average movie.

Fox has made money--or at least avoided losing its shirt--with all sorts of drek over the past year. The critics dismissed "Alvin and the Chipmunks" as dim-bulb fare, but the holiday season film was a huge hit. "Jumper" was written off as barely comprehensible action fare, but had a great opening weekend and performed well, especially overseas. More recently, Fox did a perfectly good job of opening the dumb comedy "What Happens in Vegas" and has kept M. Night Shyamalan's hapless thriller "The Happening" alive, so alive that it's managed to top the $140-million mark in global box office.

There have been movies that were so dreadful that they pretty much disappeared without a trace, notably the anonymous thriller "Shutter," the Hugh Jackman vehicle "Deception," and the forgettable spoof "Meet the Spartans." But Fox's investment in those films was minimal, so it avoided taking a bath. "Meet Dave" has a steeper price tag, costing somewhere in the $75- to $80-million ballpark. Even though Fox has a partner on the film, New Regency, it will be hard pressed to make back any money. Fox Co-Chairman Jim Gianopulos bravely told Variety that "Meet Dave" was a "seven-day movie--families can go all week; that's the beauty of summer." The seven-day part was right. After seven days, exhibitors will be falling over each other to boot "Dave" out of the theaters. 

Murphy must've seen what was coming, since he was a no-show at his own premiere. In true Hollywood fashion, everyone made excuses for him, with one of his producers saying he was busy working on another film. The only problem, as various online accounts pointed out, was that the director of that other film, "Dave's" Brian Robbins, was at the premiere himself. So Eddie's alibi didn't exactly hold up.

So what went wrong with "Meet Dave"? And what does it portend for Murphy's career? Here are a few theories:

'Speed Racer' quiz

    Everyone knows "Speed Racer" is a gigantic, astounding, mesmerizingly collosal flop, a movie that cost $150 million to make (not counting another $50 million or so to market) that has barely cracked the $42 million mark after a month in the theaters. This past weekend it dropped off an eye-popping 84% from its previous weekend's performance, making a miniscule $360,000 in 855 theaters. It's overseas performance has been anemic as well, barely hitting $36 million. Even a stream of bad reviews (average score on Metacritic: 37) couldn't stop addled summer moviegoers from avoiding it like the plague. Check out this intriguing essay if you want to know which well-known newsweekly critic gave it a rave, which critic somehow compared it--unfavorably--to "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and which critic said, after seeing the film, that he "lost the will to live." 

  But back to our point: just how bad is that $42 million box-office figure? Let see if you can guess which of the following movies has somehow managed to make less money than "Speed Racer," which according to our favorite box-office tracking site, is at $42.0 million.

1)  "College Road Trip"

2) "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins"

3) "Nim's Island"

4) "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"

5) "Golden Compass"

And the answer is: