n the year 2087, Pluto Nash (Murphy) runs the hottest nightclub on the moon. Nash got the club from a mafia friend who was threatening the life of his best friend, Anthony (Mohr). Now it's a party every night, and Nash is the host at Club Pluto in the lunar city of Little America. Dina Lake (Dawson) shows up one night, hoping that Nash will repay a debt to her father by hiring her as a singer in the club. Nash takes pity on her, and gives her a job as a waitress so that she can earn enough money to get back home to Salt Lake City.
Meanwhile, Mogan (Joe Pantoliano) and his henchmen show up with a proposition from the mysterious Rex Crater, the richest man on the moon. Nash turns down the offer of $10 million because he likes being his own boss. That's when things get rough. Barely escaping an explosion in the club, Nash pursues a would-be assassin. What he doesn't know is that it's a trap. But Dina and Nash's faithful robot bodyguard, Bruno (Quaid), come to the rescue. Now Dina and Nash are both marked for death.
Nash consults his retired police detective friend, Rowland (Peter Boyle), who tells him that Crater is trying to corner the market on gambling on the moon. He points Nash to a plastic surgeon who provides a valuable clue to the true identity of the never-seen Crater. Nash considers seeking the help of his friend Anthony, who has risen to fame as "Tony Francis," the most popular singer at Moon Beach, the lunar Las Vegas.
After another narrow escape, Nash, Dina and Bruno liberate a flying car and retreat to an abandoned mining dome on the dark side of the moon. But Mogan and his men aren't far behind, and time is running out.
This moon is indeed just made of cheese
The Adventures of Pluto Nash arrives in theaters at the end of summer after months of delays, reportedly disastrous test screenings, reshoots, re-edits and little promotion. To paraphrase the slogan for Pluto's moon club—great location, no atmosphere—Pluto Nash has a great cast, but no laughs, only the sucking sound of millions of dollars vanishing into the vacuum of space.
Nash can't figure out what it wants to be—a rollicking adventure a la Total Recall, a smart-aleck comedy a la Men in Black, an SF Casablanca or an Eddie Murphy movie. Not surprisingly, it fails at all.
Most irritating is the lack of humor, though Murphy trots out his by-now familiar grin, laugh and apoplectic double take. No amount of Murphy charisma can salvage lame bathroom jokes, lame robot jokes and lame mafia jokes. That is, to the extent there are any jokes in this movie at all.
A lot of the film gets taken up by the inane and derivative plot, which is treated as if it's The Godfather, rather than simply the armature on which to hang some funny business. As if not trusting the cleverness of its premise—a valid assumption—the filmmakers also resort to lots of laser-blast shootouts and careening moonscape car chases when things even threaten to slow down.
Only a scene in which Murphy and Dawson try on new bodies for size approaches amusing. Otherwise, the movie wastes Dawson and Murphy—who nevertheless show a spark of chemistry here and there—not to mention the other considerable talents on display, from Boyle to Mohr to John Cleese to Pam Grier to Illeana Douglas. Quaid is simply annoying as the has-been robot bodyguard. It's as if
the filmmakers took the android cab driver from Total Recall and turned him into the star of the movie.
