Imagine That

A workaholic investment counselor (Eddie Murphy) finds his career on a hot streak, coming up with one brilliant piece of financial analysis after another—he doesn’t dare admit that his sudden market prescience is coming to him from the imaginary friends of his 7-year-old daughter (Yara Shahidi), whom he has seldom had time for before this. The script by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson has a cozy family-friendly hook, a rather sweet allegory about trusting the imaginary child within. Solomon, Matheson and director Karey Kirkpatrick are onto something, but they don’t quite seem to appreciate it, and the last act slips into cliché, culminating in a cloying grade-school concert. Even so, Murphy responds to the script’s virtues with a self-effacing performance, and a nice rapport with young Shahidi.