HARO Online is consistently amused when movie studios realize how terrible their own movies are, and enjoy informing readers such. Yet, they still feel the need to inflict them upon audiences. The Adventures of Pluto Nash sat completed for two years collecting dust. Then, when Warner Bros. finally decided to release it, they did so without the benefit of a critic's screening. These are the two big signs that the studio itself has no faith in a star vehicle. However, that star is Eddie Murphy, whose career consists of spectacular swings in the quality of his movie. Murphy (Showtime, Shrek) has never been lower than he is here. The Adventures of Pluto Nash is a sad waste of a movie. There is little that is funny, little that is exciting, and little of anything that generates any sort of emotion other than boredom.
Murphy is Pluto Nash, ex-smuggler and now prosperous owner of his own nightclub on the moon. Businessman Rex Crater wants to buy out Nash to develop the moon into a large casino, and when Nash refuses to sell, Crater has his minions destroy the club. Nash sets out to find Crater and demand his club back. He discovers that few people have ever seen Crater, and for unknown reasons continues to search him out even after Crater's minions begin trying in earnest to murder him. Tagging along for the ride are his bodyguard Bruno (Randy Quaid, Not Another Teen Movie, Frank McClusky, C.I.), an outdated android, and newly hired waitress Dina (Rosario Dawson, Men in Black II, Sidewalks of New York). The more they investigate, the more dangerous things become, but everything is just as dull for the viewer.
Neil Cuthbert's (Mystery Men, Hocus Pocus) script feels at times like an extremely bad rip-off of Star Wars, mirroring the plot and some of the characters. What is missing is any spirit of adventure. Pluto Nash is a series of mini-adventures, with the ultimate goal being to find Crater. Each little jaunt for Murphy is dull. Director Ron Underwood (Mighty Joe Young, Speechless) really doesn't seem like he is doing much of anything. Everything in The Adventures of Pluto Nash is uninspiring and boring, from the lame jokes to the bland characterizations. Underwood wavers between making a comedy and making an action movie, and in trying to combine the two, fails at both. Murphy and Dawson even seem bored for a good portion of the movie. Space is a vacuum, where there is no sound. If only that were true of this movie.