This month’s Viewer’s Choice brings us one of the biggest box office flops of all time.
Movie Nights: The Adventures of Pluto Nash
This month’s Viewer’s Choice brings us one of the biggest box office flops of all time.
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Rosario Dawson nooooo! You deserve better.
Jay Mohr?
With as bad as Pluto Nash is, and its bad, it is at least not irritatingly as bad Master of Disguise. So, from that list you got there, Pluto Nash was just uninteresting and no fucks gives on how bad it is. Great review there, I know that movie was painful no matter how you look at it.
Oh please we shall not speak of Master of Disguise! I absolutely hate that abomination. It makes me ill thinking about it.
This really was a theme between the early 90s and early 00s, wasn’t it? Just his slew of comedies, Rob Schneider movies, Master of Disguise, Baby Geniuses, Ghost Dad, 90s Adam Sandler movies, where the connecting theme is some wacky over-the-top event or setting sets off these other wacky over-the-top events that only work within this wacky over-the-top universe of that movie. Man becomes animal, man-child 30 year old has to complete school, weird 60s style moon colony where stuff is futurey yet moon-y. It’s like they were trying to take the comedy style of movies like Naked Gun but they only took the wacky half and forgot to keep the reality grounded characters that do wacky things.
Now this current generation of movies has completely gotten rid of the wacky in favor of making fun of the awkwardness of real life and keeping the characters grounded in OUR reality rather than one created by the movie. You could never call The Hangover or Trainwreck wacky. Or you get Adam Sandler. My point being that I wish there were more movies like Airplane, Stripes, and History of the World that managed to find that happy balance between wacky and grounded that is just lacking in today’s Jud Apatow and Adam Sandler dominated comedic movie market.
Holy crap that was a rant… It’s Allison’s great analysis of all these late 80s to the early 00s that showed me this comedic theme across all these movies and how different it is from modern comedies.
As much as I loved the 90s culture, animation, and music…it was probably the worst decade since the early days of cinema. For every rare amazing gem like Pulp Fiction, Ed Wood, or The Shawshank Redemption, there was a slew of pointless comedies starring Rob Schneider, Pauly Shore, Jim Carrey, or Martin Lawrence or a slew of mindless Roland Emmerich disaster movies or Stephen Seagal testosterone lamefests with obtuse political commentary.
That works sometimes, and sometimes not. I’m not a huge fan of Judd Apatow movies, because sometimes the characters and films just come off as too self aware. However, they are certainly more grounded in real life experience. I’d say Wes Andersen or Christopher Guest films certainly embody the principle of finding the absurd in the everyday as well.
…but nothing could really prepare us for the mid-2000s throw-every-pop-culture-reference-at-the-wall parody movies (epic movie, date movie) following the fall of the zany 90s comedy…I really couldn’t tell you which is worse.
Also, they just lack the comedy writing talents of the greats like Zucker Brothers, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Mel Brooks. I agree though…those movies could be zany or just have zany elements, and totally work.
Apologies to wetman…I tried qouting you and respond to points you made, but it just formatted everything the same…credit where credit is due!
(ps: we need an edit feature!)
Over the years I have watched over 100 videos starring Obscurus Lupa, and never once before do I recall a video where she just seems flat out 100% pissed off to have watched the movie she is discussing. Even really horrible, terrible movies in the past, she has always found things to laugh about and poke fun at, and seemed to have a good time talking about them!
I hope you don’t have to do a lot of these forced videos and you soon get to go back to reviewing stuff you actually like to watch, Lupa. It was kinda hard for me to watch you in this because you seemed to be having such a bad time recalling this horrendous movie. :\
I thought that the twist was probably the movie’s most clever idea; who else would have been a match for such a Mary-Sue-ish character? But I wouldn’t give the movie credit for the one laugh you got from it since it came nearly at the end of the movie, when your sense of humor was probably starting to atrophy. Although I like the idea of Pluto Nash as an asshole, like if he was less Han Solo and more Jack Sparrow.
You know, between the plot hinging on a business dispute nobody cares about, total non-entities for main characters, and a comic relief sidekick who isn’t funny, this movie just seems like The Phantom Menace if it had nothing to do with Star Wars.
12 writers… and nobody thought to update that “$10 million offer” from 1985? Even ignoring that it’s the future and on the Moon, that seems like a shitty offer for a club meant to be a huge deal.
Greatest smuggling fan. I’m with Ser Davos on this – if you’re a famous smuggler, you’re not doing it right.
Alright Lupa, how about this?
Nash takes the fall for his business partner, but his partner screws him over and gets him put in for 110 years (once he dies a clone of his is supposed to be woken up and finish the rest of his life sentence). He escapes from prison, but everyone thinks he’s dead (Al Capone Alcatraz situation) so they wake up his clone who has no idea he’s a clone (and the audience isn’t told either).
The original Nash and the business partner meet up and after seven years they get the clone out on a technicality since they need to clear Nash’s name so he can get a business license again or whatever. Clone Nash turned himself around in prison while Nash Classic is still going around being a criminal ass-hole. So out of nowhere Clone Nash is given this club to run by the business partner, and after he establishes himself they intend on killing the clone to replace with Nash Classic who’s gone on to become a big wheeler and dealer in the underworld (under a different name of course).
Rosario Dawson can work at the club and can be along for the ride, or the her or the robot can be his parole officer or something and has to shadow him for a set period of time.
Anyway, the movie can be about how our choices affect who we are and the mistakes of the past vs who we are in the present. It can be fairly serious but with some comedy bits sprinkled in there. That took me five minutes and it’s a good deal more tight than the movie you just reviewed.
Yes, this is a lot more thoughtful than the actual movie. Themes and personality, wow!
Great minds think alike, I just googled up Eddie Murphy yesterday to check just when his career started falling apart. Still makes me wonder how after THIS and the Klumps they still let him make Norbit… shudder.
The commercial made me think about “Homeboys in Outer Space,” which I only vaguely remember that my mom hated.
I have not seen Pluto Nash myself, but of the viewers choices, I’ll vouch for the awfulness of Master of Disguise.
Wonder how long they had to practice that choreography to keep from accidently punching people.
That CGI car is terrible, but not quite as bad as the one in Inspector Gadget 2, which is another so-bad-its-awful movie.
Wow, that’s soul crushingly unfunny & poorly written. & you probably had to watch it more than once to make this review.
That’s not the greatest twist in the history of cinema. This is.
Omg….there’s not part of that clip I didn’t laugh at. XD
I’ve never seen The Adventures of Pluto Nash. I know of its reputation though. Although, judging by its trailer, it predicted that Hilary Clinton would be running for president. LOL. It was so bad that it somehow predicted the future! 😀 Also, I laughed my butt off when I saw “the big twist”.
The cover of the movie sucks, too. It’s just Murphy standing there, staring at the viewer. Unfortunately, covers like this have become commonplace. Where did the creativity for movie posters and DVD/Blu-Ray covers go? What’s with this photoshop crap? Anyway, great review.
I’ve commented this elsewhere, but I’ll say it again.
I saw this movie when I was about 12 years old. I didn’t find it too bad, though even then there were a few parts that were just kind of meh to me. However, I think I wound up liking it. But, as I said, I was 12. Same age I was when I saw Master of Disguise and didn’t hate that movie either.
I have no intention of rewatching either of them to see if they hold up. I think the answer would probably be ‘no’.
that intro is such a well done recreation of 80’s intros. Like i’m not joking it’s so precise i love it.
This movie puts me very much in mind of “Moon Zero Two” which was done on MST3K first season. I was honestly surprised not to see them playing “Moonopoly” and having a nightclub of chicken feather dancers.
Yep, I made the mistake of watching this a few years back in the hopes that it would be a fun so-bad-it’s-good kinda film. Nope. It just made me want to punch my TV. One thing that struck me as odd was Pluto’s request for a brand new Plymouth seeing as how that brand died a year or so before the movie came out. I didn’t realize at the time that this film spent a couple of years on the shelf after completion so that Plymouth existed when it was made but had passed away by the time it was released. Not that I think a Plymouth plug in the film if it had been released right after completion would have saved the brand. In fact it could well have hastened its demise. I’m still puzzled by Randy-Quaid-bot’s “I cannot listen and hear at the same time” line. Perhaps I misheard it?