What's with this new obsession with love and taxi cabs? The other day, I was flipping through the channels and stopped on some really bad show about dating. At one point, they start talking about some cabbie in New York who fixes up people in his cab. He's nice, and chats up his patrons, and then some of them leave him cell phone numbers so he can contact them with love matches. An interesting idea -- although it's far from the safest method out there.

But this isn't the only cabbie romance on the airwaves. The Hollywood Reporter posts that DreamWorks has picked up a rom-com spec called Shared Fare from Stacey Harman (Jingle Belles). Instead of a cupid cabbie, "the idea is based on a true experience had by Benderspink executive Langley Perer, who ended up dating a guy she split a cab with on a short trip."

As for what kind of rom-com this will be, the director circling the project should give you an indication: Brian Robbins. Does this mean Eddie Murphy will sign on, since he's starring (and has starred) in Robbins' three most recent films? Or better yet, will marketing teams descend upon cabbies and make them all budding cupids before the film's release? Or start cheap female cab fares in a sort of Ladies' Night-on-wheels marketing scheme?

Combining the words Allison Janney with indie comedy is usually music to my ears. In the last few years alone, she's rocked roles like Allie Stiffle in Chumscrubber and Bren MacGuff in Juno. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that she's signing on for two bigger-budget roles -- one that will have her working with Sam Mendes, and the other that will have her directed by Brian Robbins. Well, at least one should be completely excellent.

For Mendes, she's taking a role in his upcoming comedy, which is currently and tentatively titled This Must Be the Place. Janney will play "a loud, brassy, decidedly un-PC woman who admittedly has a few screws loose." (Could Mendes have cast that any better?) "She reunites with a former employee in Phoenix, where the expectant mother/employer (Maya Rudolph) begins a tour of the country with her husband (John Krasinski) to find the best place to raise their child."

It's Eddie Murphy ... in Eddie Murphy!

While the premise for Murphy's latest film, Meet Dave, definitely had some potential (think: Innerspace), I'm not so sure this new trailer brings all the boys to the yard, if you know what I mean. Here, Norbit director Brian Robbins re-teams with Murphy on a film that tells of a crew of miniature human-looking aliens whose human-looking spaceship walks around Earth doing funny things. Though, originally, they set out to save their planet, problems arise when their spaceship (in the form of Eddie Murphy) falls for a regular Earth girl (Elizabeth Banks).

Murphy looks to be using a combination of his Coming to America accent and his usual shtick for the spaceship character, and then he also plays the miniature alien operating said spaceship. Cue up a ton of fish out of water jokes, a few raunchy set pieces and a good amount of special effects -- and, well, Meet Dave. The film's July 11 release date will definitely secure a healthy box office take, especially since all our brains will be in dumb, popcorn summer mode. Check out the trailer above (or in a better quality over at Yahoo), then let us know what you think.

Director Brian Robbins' name keeps popping up, and still, all I can think is: "Hey, it's that middle-of-the-road actor from the '80s." He had a bunch of 1-episode stints on the big, classic shows from that decade like Cagney & Lacey, The Facts of Life, Three's Company, and Knight Rider before nabbing the part of Eric on Head of the Class. He's the guy who had the little, black and white pictures in my issues of Teen Beat because the Coreys, the Brat Pack, and other cuties ruled the color spreads. But he's actually had a lot more success directing, mainly in that uber-fluffy sort of way. These days, he's got a directorial man-crush on Eddie Murphy and the projects just keep coming.

They brought us Norbit, we're about to get a little Starship Dave, and now Variety reports that they will team up for a DreamWorks comedy called A Thousand Words. To give the duo credit, it's an interesting idea: the movie will focus on "a glib man who finds out that he has only 1,000 words left to speak before he dies." Steve Koren, the guy who penned Click, wrote the screenplay. This being said, it all depends on execution, and it doesn't help that they want to rush this before the strike. But that might just be a little tricky -- Murphy has a slew of projects stacking up, from Nowhereland to Fantasy Island. But get ready, sports fans! At some point, we'll probably have yet another battle between the critics and those who love the world of Robbins!

I know what you're thinking: "Please don't tell me the guy who directed Norbit is remaking the classic Elvis flick from 1957." Good news -- he's not. This will be an entirely different Jailhouse Rock based on the true story that was written about in an L.A. Weekly article by Joshuah Bearman. Disney has optioned the article and tapped Brian Robbins to direct. The story will follow a musician-turned-detention officer at Arizona's Tent City who decides to hold an American Idol-type singing contest at the jail. Called Inmate Idle Singing Con-Test, the event became so popular that Alice Cooper himself showed up to judge the finals. Something tells me Simon Cowell's snarky attitude wouldn't go off so well here. Whaddya think?

Robbins, who was very vocal towards critics when Norbit received tons of bad reviews, just wrapped his second film in a row with Eddie Murphy as star, Starship Dave (not to be confused with the other Murphy atrocity that was Pluto Nash). Seeing as Disney is putting this one out, I imagine the jail environment will be rather tame -- even though Tent City is one heckuva nasty place. Oh yes, I watch MSNBC's Lock Up -- I've seen the inside of practically every prison in the country. Tent City is outside though, and the inmates have to stay in tents. And since this is Arizona, it gets hot. Real hot. Needless to say, this isn't the sort of place you'd like to end up. But Robbins feels good about the project, telling Variety "I don't see this as a prison movie as much as about the healing power of music." Ah, but can that music help heal his relationship with critics as well? Guess we'll see.

It's looking like next week's big watercooler subject in Hollywood will be the surprising failure of Grindhouse at the box office. Tracked to bring in about $25 million in its opening weekend, the uber-hyped Tarantino and Rodriguez double feature will almost certainly limp into Monday with a much smaller take; it opened Friday with a paltry $5 million, a total that puts it squarely in fourth-place, behind Will Ferrell's skating movie Blades of Glory, Meet the Robinsons (whatever that is -- sorry, I just can't tell kids movies apart anymore) and the most recent Ice Cube crapfest, Are We Done Yet?, which had already been playing since Wednesday. In fact, it did only marginally better than The Reaping, which opened on Thursday and is so bad that it was called "unreleasable" by many. Let's leave aside for the moment the implications of Grindhouse's flaccid opening for the fledgling Weinstein Co.; I think it's worth considering what kind of ripples this might send through Hollywood.

For a while now, America has been holding Hollywood by the ears and screaming in its face that it only wants completely pointless, souless, painless, recycled comedy and kiddie fare at the box office, and Hollywood has happily bent over backwards to comply, turning out more and more nothing-movies each year and fast-tracking the careers of nothing-directors like Brian Robbins, who can be relied on to turn in 'critic proof' garbage with a smile. Pointless sequels to pointless originals continue to climb higher and higher into the box-office record books, bringing us ever closer to the day when an objectively worthless film that's been scientifically engineered to meet all 'quadrants' will probably crack the top spot. Meanwhile, senile industry butterflies like Peter Bart snark that it's in fact the critics who need to get with it and start praising the crap in order to stay 'relevant.'

I don't have any conclusions here, other than the one offered in my headline. It seems that the prospects for talented filmmakers who take some chances and try to create quality films that also appeal to the mainstream movie-going audience are going downhill faster than Chevy Chase on that sled in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. How long before quality films of any stripe simply become a bad investment? Obviously I'm a little worked up over this, so you'll have to allow me a little exaggeration.

The cast for Norbit Nash, er, Starship Dave is starting to take shape; Gabrielle Union, Ed Helms and Elizabeth Banks have joined the Eddie Murphy comedy, to be directed by Brian Robbins (Norbit). Pic, which kind of reminds me of that awesome 1987 flick Innerspace, tells of a spaceship full of aliens that takes the shape of a human and comes to earth seeking out a way to save their planet. Inside the human (played by Murphy, of course) are 100 human-looking aliens operating its every move. (Don't you hate it when all the aliens look like humans? Knowing Robbins, he probably thinks it's the smartest idea in the history of ever.)

Once on earth, pic switches gears and becomes more like Innerspace meets Coming to America -- the captain of the ship (yes, Murphy) accidentally falls in love with a woman (Banks) who strictly dates losers (who use Soul Glow, we hope). I imagine things will get complicated from there -- there's no way Robbins is ending this flick without at least one attempted sex scene. C'mon, 100 people aliens trying to operate Eddie Murphy having sex. Comedy was invented for scenes like that! Gabrielle Union and Ed Helms will play members of the miniature alien crew; Union as the chief cultural officer and Helms as the uptight second-in-command. Does it have potential? Yes. Will critics hate it? Probably. Will Robbins take a critic hostage and force him (or her) to watch Norbit and Starship Dave back-to-back for 100 hours in a bizarre attempt to somehow convert them and reveal "the light?" Probably not ... although that would be a good idea for Eddie Murphy's next flick.

Following in the footsteps of folks from Disney and Fox -- who recently called out critics for panning films like Norbit and Wild Hogs, even though audiences are eating them up at the box office -- Brian Robbins has popped in to add more fuel to the fire. After all, if there's one man at the center of all this rubbish, it's Robbins; not only did he direct Norbit, but he also produced Wild Hogs -- combined, both films have taken in upwards of $120 million so far. According to Robbins, he cannot -- for the life of him -- understand how a film like Norbit could score so well with audiences, yet be universally panned by critics. He says, "How do you figure that? Is the audience that stupid? Is America's taste that bad? I don't think so."

I don't think so either. It's not that all of America is stupid; I believe it has more to do with what feels familiar. Wild Hogs and Norbit are both "familiar" films; from the actors to the stories being told, audiences have watched and enjoyed similar films, therefore it's easier for them to sit there with a smile because they've already been pre-trained to do so. Robbins continues: "The only films that get good reviews are the ones that nobody sees. I just don't think you can make movies for critics." Well, this is a stupid argument, because plenty of great films simply get butchered when it comes to marketing; studios would much rather spend their money on Eddie Murphy in a fat suit than Clive Owen in a film about the end of the world. And, regardless, a number of big blockbuster films get good reviews ... but those same reviews are conveniently forgotten about when someone like Brian Robbins is trying (but failing) to make a point.

This shouting match is a tired one because, in the end, no one really wins. Hollywood will continue to churn out movies for the masses, and critics will continue to trash the shoddy acting, regurgitated plotlines and lack of originality. Just like an audience is programmed to enjoy what's familiar, a critic is programmed to be, well, critical. And neither party should be blamed for doing their job.

In the words of my friend John's teeneage daughter: OMFG! Eddie Murphy has been signed to star in another sci-fi comedy called Starship Dave and will re-team with director Brian Robbins on the project. Murphy and Robbins worked together on Murphy's previous film, the soon-to-be-released Norbit, and bonded enough during the shoot that they decided to work together again on Starship Dave. Peter Segal was originally attached to direct the pic, but for some reason (good taste perhaps?) decided to leave the project to make room for Robbins.

Starship Dave tells the story of a crew of miniture, human-looking aliens who are seeking a way to save their doomed planet. Murphy will play -- wait for it -- Dave, the human spacecraft they travel in an as well as the ship's captain. Am I the only one who thinks this can only go one way -- horribly, horribly wrong? Seriously, doesn't anyone remember The Adventures of Pluto Nash? If you don't remember this very bad Murphy sci-fil film from 2002, the official webite is still, for some reason, active. Maybe because there are just way too many Pluto Nash fans out there. Yeah, I'm sure that's it.

It's not that I don't like Eddie Murphy, I do. He's a funny man who's been in some really hilarious films like Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places and the great Bowfinger. But Murphy and space comedy are a recipe for disaster. Shooting on Starship Dave is scheduled to begin in March with arrival on DVD soon afterward. Anyone else think this is a bad idea?