If, like us, you assumed that Hellboy II was the only movie opening this weekend, you were wrong! It turns out that the execrable-looking Eddie Murphy comedy Meet Dave also comes to theaters this Friday. Based on the trailer, which we saw before Wall-E — and which only the existence of Beverly Hills Chihuahua saves from being the worst trailer ever to be paired with a future Oscar-winning film — it's about a tiny Eddie Murphy alien who lives inside a huge Eddie Murphy robot who is socially inept and wears a white suit. It's like The Jerk meets Borat meets an Ed Wood movie. It looks horrible. And apparently it is horrible — so horrible that even Eddie Murphy doesn't want to watch it!

Murphy, the retired-then-not-retired star of Meet Dave, canceled his appearance at his own movie's premiere an hour and a half before showtime last night, leaving co-stars Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union to pick up the pieces. An angry publicist (we bet) vented on Datalounge, asserting that this kind of behavior is exactly why Murphy is hated in Hollywood and didn't win an Oscar. Maybe so! We'd always thought it was because of Norbit — speaking of which, oh God, could this be worse than Norbit? Wow, maybe.

THIS is why Eddie Murphy lost the Oscar. [Datalounge via Defamer]