Pluto Nash (Murphy) is a smuggler living on the lunar colony of "Little America" after getting out of prison. He intervenes when his buddy Frank (Mohr) is about to be killed by gangsters, and winds up owning Tony's shithole nightclub. Over the next few years he turns it into a highly successful spot, but then gets a visit from Mogan (Pantoliano), a thug working for the mysterious Rex Crater, the unseen mob boss and casino mogul of the Moon. He wants to buy the club, and isn't subtle about it - he sets off a bomb when Nash refuses and sends thugs to kill him.
Nash goes on the run with his robot bodyguard Bruno (Quaid) and Dina, a waitress he's befriended (Dawson), and works on getting to Crater to try and...you know, I'm not sure what his plan was. Kill him? Try and talk him down? It doesn't much matter, because when he finally does (spoilers for a 24-year-old movie with 6% on Rotten Tomatoes), it turns out Rex is a clone of Nash himself! Laser-fight ensues, Crater falls to his death, happy ending.
OK, so...this wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It is by no means a good movie, please don't misunderstand me, but having seen all four Alvin & the Chipmunks movies (dammit Toasty) and Farty the Fart Fart: Health Infartstor (DAMMIT TOASTY) this year, this is goddamn pleasant in comparison. We're very much in the post-edgey phase of Murphy's career, and Pluto Nash is a watered-down version of Axel Foley, but like...Foley's kind of a dick, right? Nash is a kind, competent guy, and god help me, he's kind of fun to spend time with. Randy Quaid is...doing his best; what a "robot" is in the context of his movie and how much sapience they have is pretty wibbly. Rosario Dawson is charming and beautiful as always, and turns in hands-down the best performance in the movie (imagine what she could do with a good script!).
This movie seems to want to be a sci-fi 1940s detective-ish movie (I don't want to say noir, because that's not really what's happening, but let's say it's trying to be something that people would mischaracterize as noir, how's that), but it doesn't have the balls to do anything really challenging or edgy and it can't quite decide how silly it wants to be. Pam Grier is utterly wasted as Pluto's mom (and like, black don't crack but Grier is only 12 years old than Murphy while Murphy is 18 years old than Dawson, his love interest, so, um, that's a thing).
But, on the plus side, there's some interesting world-building - gambling is outlawed on Earth, which is why we're having this kind of Vegas rush to the Moon. Jay Mohr's Tony parlays Pluto's suggestion that he adopt an Italian-American persona into a glitzy career as crooner "Tony Francis", and he remembers his friend and doesn't turn out to be a bad guy or sell him out, which I liked. I actually kinda like the twist of Rex Crater being Pluto's clone - it made sense within the story, it's telegraphed a bit by cloning be clearly a thing available to the rich and powerful, and we got a good bait-and-switch with Alec Baldwin having a cameo as a gangster that disappeared after coming to the moon. There were a couple of genuinely amusing bits in the movie, and that's more than I can say for most of the shit movies I've watched recently.
I think this movie got the hate that it did because it's a) bad, but in a kind of flabby, unfocused kind of way, rather than actively awful or offensive and b) it stars Eddie Murphy, so that lack of bite is even worse. But like...I would watch this again in a heartbeat before I'd ever view another fucking Chipmunks movie.
My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: Low
Rewatch Value: Low
Next up: Sinners
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