The Adventures of Pluto Nash

Starring:Eddie Murphy, Randy Quaid, Rosario Dawson, Joe Pantoliano, Jay Mohr, Luis GuzmÃ¡n, James Rebhorn, Peter Boyle, Burt Young, Miguel A. NÃºÃ±ez Jr., Pam Grier, John Cleese, Victor Varnado, Illeana Douglas, Jacynthe RenÃ©, Alissa KrÃ¤mer, Heidi KrÃ¤mer, Lillo Brancato, Alex Sol, Doug Spinuzza
Director: Ron Underwood
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

The Adventures of Pluto Nash was shelved for nearly two years, and when it was finally released, hardly anyone noticed. In the interim, Eddie Murphy made the marginally better Showtime and started fishing for a career revival that wasn't a sequel to his previous hits. In the satirical, lunar-colony hash of Pluto Nash, Murphy's a variant of Casablanca's Rick Blaine in the year 2087, happily running the moon's hottest nightclub, refusing a buyout offer from a greedy gambler, and suffering the consequences with his sidekick robot (Randy Quaid in yet another thankless role) and newest employee (Rosario Dawson, before doing similar time in Men in Black II). A visual hybrid of Total Recall and A.I., this nearly laughless comedy would be a total write-off if it weren't for Murphy's stalwart attempt to jump-start the flagging humor. He's got the chops of a superstar, but only when his collaborators are on the same page. --Jeff Shannon

Description

Set on the moon in the year 2087, the action/adventure comedy "Pluto Nash" stars Eddie Murphy as the title character, an audacious nightclub owner who finds himself in hot water when he refuses to sell his club to the local mob.

Customer Reviews:

is it cos he's black?.......2007-01-03

Expecting a complete dud, I quickly got that this was a work of sly genius - a sci-fi 'Blazing Saddles'. Just as that movie mercilessly lampooned and stuck two fingers up at all the stiff, stuffed-turkey po-faced westerns that preceded it, this does the same hatchet job on the sci-fi genre.

The dead-pan acting, the day-glo sets, the silly running hither-and-thither, the trite adventures, the smiling big-boobed bimbo, the putzy robot, the farcical villians, the goofy henchmen, the lack of any depth, the occasional, accidental pathos, Murphy has not only captured this perfectly, but added just enough of a lemon-twist of funky-fresh, pimp-daddy, sly-dogg flava to let all that the playas know that he is just f---ing with y'all.

This is one of the smoothest, silkiest, and slyest pieces of parody I have ever seen. No wonder WB couldn't market it - it falls into no known category other than sly. Trying to see it as a comedy or an action film or an adventure or a sci-fi film is to completely miss the point. It is not even a blatant parody in the mould of a Naked Gun or an Airplane - it is way more subtle than that.

Don't believe me? Note the way he mocks Sinatra through Rosario's character with just two words - 'How Original'. What about Randy Quaid's all-purpose impersonation of C3PO/Chewbacca/The Mask/the Buck Rogers Robot/ad inifinitum. What about the coy still when Randy is frozen on the moon and all is lost - Truman Show anyone? that ET moment? the Terminator 2 thumb-up? Eddie is breaking down all the components of the genre, much like Blazing Saddles did and saying - 'is this all you got?' The sets of course pretty much cover every space sci-fi film ever made - the fact that they ultimately resemble nothing so much as a hi-tech pop concert stage set is one more in the eye for the viewer. What about the silly gun-fights? Accidentally cheesy? I think not.

See, what virtually nobody who reviewed or watched this movie, could imagine was the notion that a black dude, and a loud, raucous one at that, was actually the cleverest guy in the room. Most reviewers are so busy pandering to their prejudices when it comes to a black guy not conforming to his stereotype and his 'social' role, that they fail to entertain the idea that he sees them, but they don't see him. Come on. This guy rose to mega-prominence and fame on the back of his own talent, in a society that certainly didn't make it easy for him - are you seriously telling me that he may not have a few observations about life that the vast majority don't? All you see is the smile. Every dude in the country wants his fame and money, so how come he is the one who has it? Dude must have something. Give the guy some credit.

Hey, even I'll agree a lot of his recent films have been pretty light fare to say the least, but look at his filmography and you will see that every film of his breaks new ground, if nothing else then for African-Americans - supernatural film, romeo film, political satire, vampire film, straight action film, sci-fi, media parody film, family films, the list is endless. Eddie Murphy leads and others follow. Not to mention how the the hottest black talent of the future always appear in his films first. And note also how he does all this on his own terms - there's no overt hip-hop, black-consciousness-type hype or pandering to what's hot in the black world. He does it his way, but you can hardly say he's outdated or uncool.

And all of you are still hung up on Beverly Hills Cop! So am I, but the man has long, long moved on, so should we.

Watch this one again and appreciate a genius of our time at work. And be thankful he's a light-hearted one. It's not Eddie who has gone stale. It's your brain.

He's not quite in the league of Richard Pryor, he's just a little bit too angry for that, but hey, he's all we got. Enjoy him while you still can.

Good kid movie.......2006-11-11

The DVD was delivered quickly. I bought it because I thought that my son would enjoy it and he loves the movie.

I thought it was good..........2006-09-23

Although this movie doesn't depict the Eddie Murphy we all might think, if you put your expectations of Eddie aside and just watch the movie, it's actually pretty good. I wouldn't say it was my favorite Sci-Fi Comedy movie, but I'm tired of people giving it a bad rap just because they focus on Eddie Murphy doing something "different" than what they expect.

If you want to watch this movie because you loved "Eddie Murphy Raw" then maybe you shouldn't watch it...however, if you want to laugh at light-hearted humor, then I think it's definitely worth the watch.

Makes the Fifth Element look like Citizen Kane........2006-07-03

Just a horrendous movie. A flop of the highest order..luckily for Rosario Dawson no one watched this monstrosity or she would have never landed another role.

How Eddie Murphy ended up in this position boggles the mind. Once such an edgy and brilliant comedian and he is doing grade A Trash like this?

Just awful on all levels.

This is what Sci-Fi comedies are all about!.......2006-04-08

OK, first of all, I have to qualify my point of view: get this-- I am a huge fan of good, funny sci-fi flicks. I have to shake my head and wonder what the f*^k those folks that bashed this movie were expecting? I mean really. I was expecting (hoping for) complete silliness. This delivers nonsense in great heaps. If you are an Eddie Murphy fan, then this is Eddie at his most absurd! If you liked the Fifth Element, this is even better! The effects are great, the chick is FINE, and the jokes are non-stop. I laughed out loud I don't know how many times.
For those of you that gave this anything less than four stars, I say you are doing the rest of us a disservice. You should watch films that are more suited to your tastes. Geez!

Average customer rating:

is it cos he's black?
Good kid movie
I thought it was good...
Makes the Fifth Element look like Citizen Kane.
This is what Sci-Fi comedies are all about!

The Adventures of Pluto Nash [Region 2]
Starring: Eddie Murphy , Randy Quaid , Rosario Dawson , Joe Pantoliano , and Jay Mohr
Director: Ron Underwood
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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