Studio, Eddie Murphy do little to make critics appreciate 'Pluto'

By Andy Seiler
USA Today

Reviews for "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" will be rare as Warner Bros. isn't screening the movie for critics.

And if you expect to see Murphy, 41, extensively profiled in newspapers and magazines, you can forget that, too. According to his publicists, Murphy is not "currently" available for interviews. Translation: He's not promoting "Pluto".

"We did a whole publicity campaign and everyone supported the movie except Eddie Murphy, but that's his prerogative," says publicist Debbie Miller, a senior vice president at Warner Bros.

Finally, if you think the title of this movie sounds familiar — like a movie that was supposed to come out more than a year ago — you're right. "Pluto" originally was scheduled for the spring of 2001.

""The Adventures of Pluto Nash "has actually only been moved twice," says Greg Dean Schmitz, who tracks upcoming films for Yahoo! Movies. "But what makes it feel like more is the distance between the three dates. Any time a movie ends up being released more than a year after its original release date, it makes you wonder."

Miller says "Pluto" was delayed by special effects, reshoots and the challenge of finding a date between Murphy's "Showtime", which came out earlier this year, and "I Spy", due Nov. 3.

She despairs about the self-appointed Internet critics who see films at test screenings and have ripped the movie to shreds. At the Internet Movie Database, one writes: "When you walk out of the theater, you feel like you've just wasted an hour and a half of your life." At Ain't It Cool News, another complains about "lame action and almost no laughs."

The film, in which Murphy plays a nightclub owner on the moon in 2087 who refuses to sell out to a gangster, has "absolutely" been improved since those early screenings, Miller says.

Though Warner Bros. allowed some reporters to see "Pluto", the studio froze out critics because the movie has "been so buried in innuendo and early criticism" that it can't get a fair shake from them, Miller says. " `It's not as bad as I thought' isn't exactly what we're going for," she says.

All this might sound like discouraging news for "Pluto", but probably not for Murphy. The actor, whose recent blockbusters include "Shrek", "The Nutty Professor" and the "Doctor Dolittle" series, is very resilient.

"Eddie Murphy is like a high performance brand with a great track record," says Tom Borys, president of box office tracker Nielsen EDI. "His high-performance brand has gone through the business cycle ups and downs that any brand with longevity experiences."

Other analysts agree. Says Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com: "Fans forget his clunkers and move on to upcoming releases." Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc., adds: "He has had career ups and downs like so many of his counterparts but always recovers and then ascends to even greater heights."

Consider this comeback kid's record:

Red hot from his early '80s performances on "Saturday Night Live", Murphy became a movie star with "48 Hrs." (1982) and "Trading Places" (1983). He has admitted his ego soared at the time, only to be grounded by the '84 flop "Best Defense". His next movie? The blockbuster" Beverly Hills Cop", which spawned two sequels.

By the '90s, with such so-so efforts as "Boomerang", "The Distinguished Gentleman" and "Vampire in Brooklyn", Murphy's heyday seemed to have passed. He hit bottom when he made headlines for his encounter with a male transvestite prostitute in 1997. But then came 1998's animated "Mulan". He stole the show with just his voice.

"You're only as big as your last movie" is a Hollywood truism, but it doesn't apply to Murphy. For every "Metro" or "Holy Man" that bombs, he'll win back the moviegoers with a "Shrek". Again, he supplied only his voice but earned some of his best reviews.

Murphy only gives interviews to the print press under the most controlled of circumstances. Even while publicizing "Shrek", he had his quotes forwarded to USA TODAY via e-mail. Yet his hits are bigger than those of stars who are press-friendly and get reams of coverage.

End result: "Nine $100 million-grossing starring roles (including two vocal roles)," says Borys, "which puts him among the top-grossing male stars."

And though Murphy's stand-up comedy act, captured in 1987's "Eddie Murphy Raw", was probably the most unrelentingly raunchy the mass audience had seen, he now specializes in family movies.

Schmitz says: "And that appears to be what he's going to be focusing on in the years to come, with movies like "Daddy Day Care" and" Haunted Mansion" scheduled for production this year."