Barely rising above the mediocre, Over the Hedge director Karey Kirkpatrick's minimalist fantasy finds Eddie Murphy in embarrassing touchy-feely mode. He's a divorced workaholic businessman who only stops neglecting daughter Yara Shahidi when her imaginary playmates start offering canny investment advice. No special effects are used in this muddled fable about finding one's inner child through make-believe. Instead, Murphy and Shahidi merely run around pretending to be in a fairy-tale world, populated by three invisible princesses with the power to predict gold futures. It's a conceit that refuses to work and comes across as annoyingly lame in a movie context. The Beatles cover-versions don't help, either. The fact that it manages to pull off a tearful resolution is nothing short of a minor miracle. Best performance comes from Thomas Haden Church as Murphy's native American rival with a neat line in phoney reservation spiritualism.

A financial executive who can't stop his career downspiral is invited into his daughter's imaginary world, where solutions to his problems await.