August 18, 2002 | At the risk of sounding like a chronic contrarian, I must confess I had a fair-to-middling good time with The Adventures of Pluto Nash, a prodigious popcorn flick that may the most undeserving victim of critical overkill since Town and Country.

Sure, it's an ostentatiously overproduced folly, the kind of movie in which even the most engaging actors are repeatedly upstaged by spectacular special effects and production design. But it's also the kind of movie in which f/x ostentation and actor-chewing scenery are, for better or worse, intrinsic elements of a grand design. The movie is filled with sly inside jokes, but perhaps the cleverest gag of all is its matter-of-fact gigantism.

At the center of things is Eddie Murphy, an actor who can be something of a special effect all by himself. (Sometimes literally, as in the Nutty Professor movies.) As Pluto Nash, intergalactic smuggler turned lunar entrepreneur, he struts through the movie in his mid-range, easy-to-take sassy-and-brassy mode. He's genuinely appealing and thoroughly convincing as the owner of the liveliest nightclub in the moon colony of New America, circa 2080. And he's equally believable, if not always as ingratiating, when he reverts to a space-age version of his fast-talking and straight-shooting Beverly Hills Cop persona after his club is bombed to smithereens by interloping gangsters.

Smoothly directed by Ron Underwood (City Slickers), Pluto Nash is pretty much one long chase sequence, as Pluto runs from bad guys and worse marksmen while seeking the mysterious kingpin who wants to turn Club Pluto (or what's left of it) into a gambling casino.

During his long-distance sprinting, Pluto is joined by Diana Lake (Rosario Dawson), a would-be singer hired as a waitress shortly before the big bang at Club Pluto, and Bruno (Randy Quaid), an antiquated robot bodyguard with the voice of Liberace, the plodding gait of Frankenstein's Monster and the bald-pated look of Vin Diesel's older, daffier sibling. Murphy all too often appears to be flying solo in his movies, even in scenes where he's supposed to be interacting with co-stars. With Dawson and Quaid, however, he's more giving and engaged than usual, which enhances the interplay among the three central characters.

Most of the movie's humor stems from anachronisms that abound in a late 21st-century lunar colony that resembles mid-'90s urban America with a wide-open, Wild West mindset. (Despite all the shootings and explosions, the only police officer in evidence is a retired cop played by Peter Boyle.) There are jokey allusions to everything from Microsoft to Michael Jordan, cheeky recyclings of "ancient" pop-culture phenomena – Jay Mohr does a bang-up job as a Sinatra-slick lounge singer – and paper money nicknamed after the ex-President whose picture appears on each bill. "Take a bunch of Hillaries," someone says.

The climax pivots on a truly surprising plot twist, but the fun is mitigated, here and elsewhere, by the formulaic bang-bang stuff that takes up too much time throughout the movie.

Even so, The Adventures of Pluto Nash is more of a pleasant surprise than an epic debacle. And while I can understand why the movie's many production delays and rescheduled opening dates generated so much negative advance buzz, I can't help wondering why Warner Bros. practically begged for scorching reviews from our more bloodthirsty critics by not permitting preview press screenings. I've seen much, much worse Hollywood product launched with mega-hype, action figures and fast-food tie-ins.