The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)

Here’s a theory for you. It’s August 2002. A new movie hits theaters called The Adventures of Pluto Nash. It stars Eddie Murphy, hot off being Eddie Murphy. It features Rosario Dawson, hot off starring in Josie and the Pussycats. It features Randy Quaid, hot off… Was he ever hot off anything? It’s a sci-fi action flick involving clubs and casinos. And it bombs. It bombs worse than most movies bomb. It cost 100 million dollars to make and only earned 7 million dollars in the box office. It’s a failure among failures.

Skip ahead four years. It’s August 2006. There are some major changes in our solar system. As all the 90s kids know from watching The Magic School Bus during their childhood, there are nine planets. That’s about to change. Pluto is losing its status as a full-on planet. It’s being demoted. There will now only be eight planets circling the sun and Pluto will become one of the many dwarf planets that also circle. Pluto is no longer the Pluto that we grew up loving.

Are these two things connected? Could the failure of The Adventures of Pluto Nash have led to people calling for the demotion of the planet? The four-year gap would most definitely give enough time for the debates to go on, the paperwork to go through, and the studies to go to completion. It would give enough time for scientists to come to a consensus that would see a planet become a dwarf planet. I doubt they’re related though. If they were, we probably would have seen Mars get demoted after the failure of Mars Needs Moms and Jupiter get demoted after the lackluster release of Jupiter Ascending. It’s fun to think about, though. It’s fun to wonder if the poor performance of a movie could have that drastic an effect on something else.

If you couldn’t tell from that ridiculous introduction, this week’s movie is The Adventures of Pluto Nash. I know, that’s not surprising at all. Pluto Nash (Eddie Murphy) was a career criminal, fresh out of jail after being caught smuggling things to The Moon. He saved his friend Anthony Frankowski (Jay Mohr) from some loan sharks demanding their money back, bought out his club, and told Anthony to change his name to Tony Francis. Soon after, Club Pluto became the most successful nightclub on The Moon. Until it was blown up by Rex Crater, a man wanting to buy out all property on The Moon and turn the whole place into a giant casino. Pluto fought back to keep his club.

The Adventures of Pluto Nash aspired to great heights but never reached them. Part of that was the visual aesthetics of the movie. It was set in a future where the inhabitants of Earth built colonies on the moon. It allowed for a mid-90s style of design for exterior shots in the colonies. The seedy hotel area, the bunker, and even the district in which Pluto had his club felt like they were ripped from the aesthetics of other, earlier movies. Think back to things like Judge Dredd, Super Mario Bros., and the science fiction movies of Paul Verhoeven, except with slight variations based on the function of the sets.

That visual style of The Adventures of Pluto Nash made sense since the movie was shelved for two years before it was released. That meant it was likely filmed in 1999 and completed in 2000. It was a 90s film that would have fit in among those 90s films. The problem was that it was turn of the century 90s, which meant that the filmmakers were more confident in using computer effects that weren’t quite up to the task. Certain exterior shots, mostly involving vehicles, were presented through CGI. Though the people behind The Adventures of Pluto Nash were confident enough to use the effects, they didn’t have the resources to pull them off successfully. It led to some unconvincing vehicles moving across the screen that took you right out of the action.

The other downfall of The Adventures of Pluto Nash was the story, itself. Much like other movies that studios thought were too long, several scenes were removed simply to save time. Combine that with on-set improvisations that led to story rewrites during shooting, and there was a mess of consistent story threads. People came in and out of the movie at seemingly random times. Twists that made no sense drove the movie to its conclusion. Certain scenes didn’t give the characters time to breathe because they quickly had to move things to the next scene. The story was a mess.

The easiest place to see the mess was in the characters. Anthony Frankowski was introduced in the first scene as Pluto’s buddy who owned a bar. Pluto bought the bar and the movie flashed forward seven years to Club Pluto being the hottest spot on The Moon. Anthony, now going by the name Tony Francis wasn’t seen again until Pluto broke into a casino near the end of the movie. He was referenced a bunch as the original owner of the club but wasn’t seen until Pluto needed a way to get to the penthouse of the casino. Tony tried to help him, they got caught, and Tony wasn’t seen again. He was in the opening scene, came back for about three minutes, and disappeared again.

Then there was Pluto’s mother, Flura (Pam Grier). She was in two scenes of the movie. She found Pluto at a seedy hotel and told him to leave The Moon to stay safe. She helped Pluto escape when the bad guys showed up and then was out of the movie. Well, she showed up later for about five seconds. She was on a phone screen to tell Pluto that someone was murdered. She wasn’t heard from again. Characters like these were clearly designed to play major parts in the movie but had been reduced to roles that clearly felt like they were cut down to almost nothing.

Oh, there’s also Miguel (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.), Pluto’s partner in the club business. He’s a semi-familiar face who worked with Pluto at Club Pluto until the club was blown up by Rex Crater’s men. He got two scenes to set the character up. One involved an interaction with Pluto where he talked about how well the club was doing then walked away because he saw an ass he liked. The other was when he asked Dina Lake (Rosario Dawson) to take some drinks up to Pluto’s office. The character was killed offscreen during the explosion of Club Pluto and nobody even took a minute to mourn. They quickly moved on with their lives as they tried to get to the bottom of Rex Crater.

The problems with The Adventures of Pluto Nash wouldn’t be complete without bringing up the big twist. THERE ARE SPOILERS COMING UP. The entire movie was Pluto Nash fighting back against Rex Crater because Rex’s men destroyed Club Pluto in an attempt to take control of the location and build a casino. Pluto went on a crazy journey to confront Rex Crater, only to find out that Rex Crater was him. Or a clone of him. Or he was a clone of Rex Crater. I’ve seen this movie multiple times and I’m not clear on that. Let me look it up, quick. Rex was the evil clone. Got it. Anyway, it was something that couldn’t really have been suspected. Clones had been brought up in the movie through Tony Francis, who had a wife so good he made a duplicate of her. But there was nothing that ever hinted at Pluto even possibly having a clone. It was a dun dun DUNNNNNNNNN moment that didn’t land because it wasn’t twisting anything or anyone you previously knew. It was adding something completely new. That’s not a great thing to do when you’re pushing into your climax.

All that said, The Adventures of Pluto Nash had some good things to counter-balance the bad. It wasn’t all bad writing and bad effects. There was more to the movie than those two negative things. For starters, the performances were all relatively good. The actors gave the best they could to make the movie entertaining. For the most part, it worked. Secondly, there were some great jokes scattered throughout the movie. The comedy worked where the rest of the writing didn’t. Those two things combined helped to make The Adventures of Pluto Nash a fun film, even if it was lacking in other areas.

Eddie Murphy was the driving force behind the movie. People might consider The Adventures of Pluto Nash the start of his decline in terms of quality, but he still seemed to be trying. He brought the bravado that the character needed. Pluto Nash felt confident in every choice he made, which was necessary to the success of the character. People wouldn’t like him if he wasn’t confident and likable. Without Eddie Murphy in the role, that may not have happened. Rosario Dawson’s character was the straight-man role to Pluto Nash’s bravado and eccentricities. She filled the role well, though it would have been nice for her character to exist outside of being a reaction to Pluto’s antics.

The standouts, however, were the supporting players. There was a wide array of supports that helped bring The Adventures of Pluto Nash to life. Bruno (Randy Quaid) was Pluto’s trusty sidekick, an old model android bodyguard. He was the muscle of the heroic group, able to take down amounts of people that Pluto and Dina couldn’t. The fun twist to the character was that Pluto gave him a happiness chip. Even when he was angry, he was programmed to have a forced smile. It added to the comedy, while the character’s action chops helped propel the action scenes forward.

Two of Rex Crater’s henchmen were played by Joe Pantoliano and Victor Varnado. They were those bumbling type of action-comedy henchmen who seem like they should be capable at their jobs, based on their position, but fumble almost every attempt to take down the villain. They blew up Club Pluto and tricked Pluto into a trap where he was surrounded by bad guys. He managed to get away. They tracked him down to his hideout and attacked. He got away. They chased him across the open landscape of the moon and watched his vehicle explode. He got away. Everything they did just wasn’t enough. One highlight that comes to mind from everything they did is a moment where Victor Varnado’s character had a rocket launcher and stormed out of their vehicle, ready to shoot Pluto’s hideout with it. He held it at a wrong angle, though, which caused the rocket to drop on the floor in front of him. Their bumbling nature had a lot to do with quick visual gags that showed them fumbling their duties.

The final two supporting players I want to mention are two quick characters that there’s not too much to say about, though they bring some fun energy to everything. I already mentioned Tony Francis a few times. Jay Mohr truly embodied the casino crooner character. He seemed to have good intentions, aside from the wife clone thing, but wasn’t smart enough to pan those intentions out without help. He was a fun pairing with Pluto for the two scenes he was with Pluto. The other character was a smuggler played by Luis Guzmán who found Pluto, Dina, and Bruno after their car exploded. He idolized Pluto and was happy to help however he could. It was pure fanboy energy brought into The Adventures of Pluto Nash, giving the movie a final kick toward the finish line. The way he sang while driving around the moon, the way he played craps in the casino, the way he nearly ruined Pluto’s plan to get up to the casino penthouse. Luis Guzman is always great, and that was no different here.

As much as I can see where people get the idea that The Adventures of Pluto Nash is a bad movie, I don’t quite agree with it. It had some major faults. The effects were of that early 2000s era  that weren’t realistic enough to feel a part of the world and weren’t cartoonish enough to feel like a real stylistic choice. There were characters coming in and out of the movie at random times, feeling like they almost shouldn’t even be there. And there seemed to be chunks of story missing that would bring everything together in a wholly cohesive way.

With all those bad things, it would seem like a bad movie. The thing was it was fun. The performances and jokes more than made up for the shortcomings. The Adventures of Pluto Nash was by no means a great piece of filmic art. To call it that would be a lie, and it would also make you look like a pompous ass to talk in that way. However, it was an entertaining movie that justified its run time by simply being entertaining. It’s nothing special, but it’s a decent enough hour and a half of science fiction action-comedy fun.

My theory that the failure of The Adventures of Pluto Nash led to the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet is nothing but a theory. There is no basis in reality of that being a fact. How could a movie like this affect science in that way? What I can tell you for sure is that there was only a four-year difference between the two. The Adventures of Pluto Nash came out and floundered in the summer of 2002. In the summer of 2006, our solar system became an eight-planet solar system instead of the nine-planet solar system we were accustomed to. Coincidence? I think so.

And here are a few notes:

• Super Mario Bros. (week 248) was mentioned in this post.
• The director of The Adventures of Pluto Nash was Ron Underwood, the director of Tremors (week 360).
• The Adventures of Pluto Nash was the fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Mark Camacho, who was in How the Toys Saved Christmas (week 158), Nine Lives (week 228), and Snake Eater III: His Law (week 320).
• The only other four-timer was the great Miguel A. Núñez Jr. He was previously seen in Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning (week 46), Street Fighter (week 280), and Leprechaun 4: In Space (week 359).
• Luis Guzmán has now appeared in three Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were Beverly Hills Chihuahua (week 70), Sandy Wexler (week 231), and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
• Randy Quaid also made his third appearance in The Adventures of Pluto Nash after appearing in Freaked (week 131) and The Wraith (week 355).
• Two actors from The Adventures of Pluto Nash were in 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (week 10). They were Alissa Kramer and Heidi Kramer.
• Steve Barry and Serge Houde were both in Nine Lives (week 228) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
• Battlefield Earth and The Adventures of Pluto Nash both featured John Topor and Russell Yuen.
• Snake Eater II: The Drug Buster (week 320) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash were both movies with Johnny Goar and Eric Hoziel.
• The Adventures of Pluto Nash wasn’t the first time Joe Pantoliano was in Sunday “Bad” Movies. He was seen in Baby’s Day Out (week 5).
• Burt Young returned from Going Overboard (week 67) to be featured in The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
• The Adventures of Pluto Nash featured John Cleese of Die Another Day (week 153) fame.
• Michael Rudder was in both How the Toys Saved Christmas (week 158) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
• Jay Mohr had roles in both The Adventures of Pluto Nash and 200 Cigarettes (week 161).
• With Pam Grier’s appearance in The Adventures of Pluto Nash, she has now been in two Sunday “Bad” Movies. The other one was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (week 224).
• Eddie Murphy was the star of both Norbit (week 227) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
• Illeana Douglas showed up in The Adventures of Pluto Nash. She was in Mega Shark vs. Kolossus (week 300).
• Finally, Audrey Wasilewski was in Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (week 420) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
• Have you seen The Adventures of Pluto Nash? What did you think of it? Did you like it or not? Let me know what you thought in the comments or on Twitter.
• Twitter is a good place to contact me if you have suggestions for what movies I should be checking out for Sunday “Bad” Movies. You could also put the suggestions in the comments.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram, continuing the bad movie fun all week long.
• To close things out, I’ve got a little preview of next week. I’ll be heading back to the world of Tyler Perry for the movie. It’s a newer one, from last year. I’ll be checking out Tyler Perry’s A Fall from Grace. Come on back in a week to read what I have to say about it. I’ll see you then.