The movie Eddie Murphy regrets making the most: “That breaks me all the way down”
Every Hollywood legend has at least one unmitigated disaster in their filmography. Hell, most of them probably have a couple. But if you were to ask Eddie Murphy about his biggest debacle, he might just burst into tears. Well, OK, not really—but he definitely wouldn’t be happy you brought it up.
Murphy had major regrets about making this movie, not least because it was savaged by critics and lost so much money that it was declared one of the biggest flops of all time. Oh, and to make matters worse, his eight-year-old son told him—to his face—that it was lame.
The late 1990s/early 2000s were a strange time for Murphy. With 1996’s The Nutty Professor and 1998’s Dr Dolittle, the iconic comedian recovered from a dicey period to become Hollywood’s biggest family comedy star. He made sequels to these films in 2000 and 2001 – both big hits – and starred as the beloved Donkey in Shrek, which made a gargantuan amount of money. However, outside of these family-friendly blockbusters, he had considerably less success with Holy Man, Life, Bowfinger, and Showtime.
In 2002, though, the faltering star tried to steady the ship with a silly sci-fi comedy called The Adventures of Pluto Nash. On paper, it sounded like a solid idea—Murphy as a fast-talking nightclub owner on the moon is a pretty unique and funny concept. In the right hands, it could have been a hit. Unfortunately, the right hands never came anywhere near Pluto Nash.
From its confused tone to its cartoonish imagery, its laugh-free script to a star who wasn’t exactly on top form, the film—if you can even call it that—was a cinematic atrocity.
Worse, Pluto Nash was saddled with an astronomical budget of $100million, meaning it needed to bust significant blocks to justify its cost. To everyone’s horror, though, the critical reception was so nuclear – and its trailer so godawful – that the movie only recouped a humbling $7m at the global box office. This made it one of the most costly misfires in Hollywood history, and to this day, it regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made.
In 2016, when Murphy was promoting his new film Mr Church – a tearjerker about a bereaved young girl who befriends a cook – he was asked what movie would be his go-to if he wanted to have a good cry. Never one to miss an opportunity for a gag, Murphy quipped, “Pluto Nash, that breaks me down. That breaks me all the way down.”
In truth, while Murphy had previously starred in films that hadn’t quite made their money back, he’d never been in something like Pluto Nash, which could feasibly have bankrupted a smaller studio than Warner Brothers. He groused: “In my view, I’ve never had a flop movie or a movie that didn’t work. If I did the movie, and they paid me lots and lots of money to do it, it’s a fucking smash. Any movie that I was in that they paid me a lot of money for was a fucking smash.” It seems clear that Pluto Nash’s failure hurt Murphy’s pride if nothing else, and proved that even he wasn’t immune to a cinematic catastrophe.
Worst of all for Murphy, though, was the fact that he even received criticism for the film at home. “I remember the first time we watched Pluto Nash, I had my son Myles with me,” he told the New York Times. “He was probably about eight. Myles is sitting there with me, and the movie’s all soft. Then, at the end, it goes silent, and my little baby son goes, ‘Corny.'”
He laughed, “That was challenging. Even the baby knows it’s corny!”
