No Good Very Bad Movies Finale! The other one with Eddie Murphy

 

 

Title: The Adventures of Pluto Nash

What Year?: 2002

Classification: Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

As I write this, it’s the start of a new year, and most of what I’ve been looking at is simply wrapping things up. For this feature in particular, I have been ready to finish for a long time, without letting go of my goal of getting to a solid 50. I reached 48 cleaning out odds and ends. For the last 2, however, I decided the only option was to wait for the right ones to come to me. I knew I had one when I watched Super Inframan. I remained patient for one more, until as often happens, it landed in my lap. It’s truly a film that would be all but obligatory for a feature like this, a legendary critical and financial bomb whose reputation reached even me. I present The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and what I can say off the bat is that what it made at the box office is about what it looks like it cost.

Our story begins in a middling-future lunar colony, at a nightclub whose proprietor performs accordion music in a kilt. Then we meet our hero, an ex-con named Pluto, because there isn’t a buzzsaw the backside of this movie could miss. When he discovers the actually interesting character is in debt to an interplanetary gangster, he intervenes and time-skips to become the new owner of the now-successful establishment. He makes a new lady friend, only to discover that a mysterious space mafia boss named Crater has decided to kill him rather than collecting actual money. Pluto makes his escape, with help from his mother and his android bodyguard Bruno. But he’s still on the run, and he still doesn’t know who the boss is. It’s robots, AI cabbies, Moon suits and wacky hijinks all the way down. The real mystery is, how did this cost $100 million dollars??!!

The Adventures of Pluto Nash was a 2002 science fiction/ comedy film directed by Ron Underwood (see Tremors 2, kind of), starring Eddie Murphy (see The Golden Child, and I will get back to that). The production had reportedly developed from a story and script optioned in 1983, with Murphy ultimately being given significant control over the final script. The eventual cast included Rosario Dawson as the nominal romantic interest Dina, Randy Quaid as Bruno and Joe Pantoliano of The Matrix as the goon Mogan. The film was an unquestioned commercial failure, earning a worldwide box office of $7.1 million against a budget estimated at $100M before marketing costs, and was subjected to widespread ridicule including multiple Razzie nominations for Murphy’s performances as both Nash and (spoiler) Rex Crater. Pantoliano publicly claimed that he and others involved in the production expected that the movie was “going to be sh(*)t”, though he described the finished film as “better than I thought it was going to be.” The film has received some reappraisal, without achieving “cult” status. It remains available in digital formats.

For my experiences, this one first came not my radar sight unseen when I reviewed The Golden Child, and it definitely figured in my vocal frustrations with that film. Beyond that, the context comes down to what I have already laid down about my conflicted experiences with genre films by “mainstream” filmmakers. At their best, you get subversive satire and genuinely fresh ideas like Hancock and An American Werewolf In London. More typically, you can expect unusually polished films that can break new ground even if they don’t go as far as they think, like A Quiet Place and Frozen (one last time, not the Disney movie…). Then at the low end, you get the likes of The Hand and The Space Between Us, which simply combine the worst cliches of genre and “mainstream” films with few if any of their good points. With all that laid out, this film immediately stands out as peculiarly unremarkable, not inept, not offensive, and in most respects not interesting apart from its quite spectacular commercial failure.

Moving forward, most of the observations to be made can be counted as obvious. The production values, story and especially the acting all hold at a high standard of mediocrity, which the film really had no excuse not to reach given the talent and unfathomable cost involved. The penalty is a plot that tends to feel even more predictable than it is. I can personally attest that at the big “twist”, I fully expected to see a completely different character revealed as the villain, which would absolutely have been more interesting. What keeps the proceedings in the realm of watchability are the actual leads, Murphy and Randy Quaid as the android. Murphy’s protagonist is at least consistently likeable and generally competent, especially compared to The Golden Child, which I can credit to the actor as holding out for dignified material. Quaid, whom I did not recognize, offers one of the most intriguing AI characters on record. What’s most impressive is that he gets into the “uncanny valley” without a single special effect apart from a very slight distortion of his voice. This leads to a still better payoff as underlying intellectual and emotional complexity gradually emerges. It all culminates in a no-win survival situation, as the bot forges on to the heart-breaking end. Of course, the emotional impact is promptly wasted as the narrative punts with a deus ex machina cop-out.

The real “con” side of all this is the unaccountably weak effects, particularly in the exterior lunar landscapes of the “chase” sequences. There was tremendous potential in putting the light-comedy cast in a realistic space environment. Instead, we get a gray backdrop that is as dull as it is fake. Now, this is something where I could second-guess myself, and allow that there was a lot of bad CGI in the 1990s and early 2000s. But this was 4 years after A Bug’s Life, and the visuals don't come close to AntZ. Even syndicated shows like Deep Space 9 had work at least as good well before this came out. The only movie I can think of that might offer favorable comparison is Sky High, which cost less than half as much. Even then, in the areas that matter, it’s like comparing The Wild to Over The Hedge (which led to the most violent language I have ever used in an animation review). The real difference is that Sky High was effective as both a genre deconstruction and a “straight” take, with enough energy to sustain an intentional “camp” factor that this film rarely even tries to achieve. This gets right to an already pervasive observation: This not only should have been better, but could have been more entertaining if it was worse.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the opening. Right after the credits, we get a pan of the lunar colony exterior, which is just interesting enough to make the drab effects seem tolerable. Then we cut to the nightclub, where the above-mentioned owner is singing an irreverent and cynical ditty to his own accompaniment on accordion. That would be Jay Mohr, an accomplished character actor long before and after this. And yes, he’s wearing the kilt. Alas, I wasn’t able to find a clip of more than a few seconds of this for a second viewing in the course of this review. Even so, I can attest it is a surreal high point of the movie that, after Quaid/ Bruno, is probably the main reason I can muster any measure of good will for this film. What’s truly noteworthy is that there’s a quite seamless transition as he finishes the act and starts a conversation with Pluto. It’s wacky, it’s creative, and per the usual refrain, it’s everything the whole movie should have been.

In closing, I could give my usual defense of the rating. But this is one time I feel my decision is self-explanatory. It may not “deserve” to have the same rating as Frozen or Cross Of Iron, but if I could let The Space Between Us go with 2/3, I have no problem letting this one pass on the technicality that I don’t actively hate it. What I really find worthy of comment is my classification as Anachronistic Outlier, which I have long since admitted to be my most overused subcategory. In fact, this is just about the most literal example I have ever encountered. It is truly a movie that history left behind long before it hit theaters, a 1980s story developed as a 1990s movie that came out 2 years into the new millennium. Given that backstory, the question is not why it failed but whether there was any point in the timeline where it might have been successful, let alone good. The final lesson is that we can never know what might have been. That’s enough for me to count this review as ending on a high note. Punch it, Bishop!