• Cert:
• Running time: 95 minutes
• Year: 2002
• Released: 30th August 2002
• Widescreen Ratio: 1.85:1
• Rating: 4/10

Director:

Ron Underwood (City Slickers, Pluto Nash, Tremors)

Cast:

Pluto Nash : Eddie Murphy
Bruno : Randy Quaid
Dina Lake : Rosario Dawson
Mogan : Joe Pantoliano
Tony Francis : Jay Mohr
Felix Laranga : Luis Guzm=E1n
Belcher : James Rebhorn
Rowland : Peter Boyle
Flura Nash : Pam Grier
James : John Cleese
Gino : Burt Young
Dr. Mona Zimmer : Illeana Douglas
Babette : Jacynthe Ren=E9

For a film that's spent nearly two years on the shelf and wasn't screened for the press for fear of terrible reviews, this isn't quite the catastrophe I was expecting.

Judging by the box office tanking it endured on its recent release in the States, where it sank without trace having scraped together barely $4m against a $90m production budget, these two factors have done its reputation no favours whatsoever. That's not to say Pluto Nash is any good though - it's very much from the Scooby-Doo school of D+ indifference.

The action begins on the Moon (and why not?) in the year 2080 where Murphy plays the titular Pluto, a one time smuggler recently released from jail and looking to go legit. We meet him in his friend Tony's bar and, after an encounter with some gangsters to whom Tony owns money, Pluto ends up as the bar's owner. Fast forward seven years and Club Pluto is the most successful joint in town (the town being Little America). The rather thin story then evolves when Pluto is approached by some heavies representing the infamous criminal, Rex Crater (droll) with an offer to buy his club so it can be turned into a casino. When Pluto declines, they blow up the club and try to kill him, so setting up the rest of the film as one long chase through various lunar locations.

There's really not much to get excited about here. The action sequences are flat and uninspired and the jokes are pretty poor. Some of the sets are nice and the special effects are adequate, although I can't quite see where the $90m went. I guess quite a bit of it must have gone on the high calibre supporting cast, which is probably the main thing that lifts this film out of the dismal bracket and into the mediocre. Mind you, there are two schools of thought here. Does the quality cast prevent the film from being a complete travesty or is the quality cast wasted in such a sub-par movie?

Both these arguments hold water as, although most of them do decent work, they're all nothing parts. Pantoliano, Mohr and Boyle are always good value and Guzm=E1n, as ever, is an absolute joy, but their roles could just as easily have been played by nameless nobodies.

There are a couple of wasted efforts though : Quaid (looking and sounding disturbingly like Paul Gambaccini) is usually worth watching, but his turn as robot Bruno brings surprisingly few chuckles ; Grier (as Pluto's mother) looks as though Jackie Brown never happened ; and Cleese (as a car computer/autopilot) could have been filming a TV advert. Murphy himself is strangely subdued and a little bored looking at times and, although he still has a certain screen presence, it's clear his best days are long behind him.

At the end of the day, it's hard to see who Pluto Nash will appeal to. Adults will be fairly unimpressed by the whole affair and teenagers will be looking for more whizz and bang. It might have played well for undemanding kids but, for a PG certificate, there's an awful lot of mild swearing and gunplay that probably makes it unsuitable for under 8s. If you still have an itch to see this, you'd better scratch it pretty quick, because I doubt it will be around very long, and will be forgotten quickly when it goes..

Review copyright © Paul Greenwood, 2002.