The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Plot, History, Reception and Trailer

The Adventures of Pluto Nash is a 2002 comedy film directed by Ron Underwood and starring Eddie Murphy as the owner of a lunar nightclub investigating who was behind the arson that destroyed his club. It was one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.

Plot

In the decade of 2080, on a lunar colony called Little America, a retired smuggler named Pluto Nash (Eddie Murphy) must save his nightclub from the mysterious underworld figure Rex Crater, who wants to turn it into a casino. Aided by his android friend Bruno (Randy Quaid), former club owner and talentless singing star Anthony “Tony Francis” Frankowski (Jay Mohr), retired cop Rowland (Peter Boyle), his own mother (Pam Grier), and waitress/would-be chanteuse Dina Lake (Rosario Dawson), he takes on an intergalactic mob, a mad geneticist, and his own clone to save his club from becoming just another gambling joint.

History

The movie had its origins in the mid-1980s. The script went through numerous revisions and, upon completion of filming, sat on the shelf for two years, finally being released in August 2002. The majority of critics lambasted the movie for its acting, dialogue, lack of humor, and very poor and crude special effects, even more so for a movie with a $100,000,000 budget. It was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Picture. Production began in April 2000, and wrapped up in September 2000. At one point, Jennifer Lopez was cast for the role of Dina in this film, but eventually turned it down. Rosario Dawson was cast in her place.

Reception

The film was universally savaged by critics with a 6% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and was highly unsuccessful financially. Its budget was estimated at (U.S.) $100 million, with marketing costs of $20 million and the domestic box office (of which the studio typically receives about half) was $4,420,080 and $2,683,893 (overseas) for a total worldwide gross of $8,908,563 Eddie Murphy poked fun at himself in an interview with Barbara Walters about this movie by saying: “I know two or three people that liked this movie.”[1] The film performed better on DVD, but not even a US DVD rental gross of $24,983,000 could drag the film into breaking even.

Currently, this is the sixth-largest financial loss of any film ever made (after Stealth, Cutthroat Island, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Alamo, and Around the World in 80 Days), both in absolute dollar values, and adjusted for inflation.[citation needed] It has since been referred to in multiple case-studies of film flops. This flop was even satirized in an episode of Robot Chicken where August 16 was established as Pluto Nash Day when over 57 people commited suicide due to the movie.

In 2008, Murphy appeared in another science-fiction themed comedy, Meet Dave. Although Meet Dave had been scripted under the title Starship Dave, studio executives for 20th Century Fox insisted on the title change because of the box office failure of The Adventures of Pluto Nash.