Film review: ‘MOONFALL’, by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Moonfall follows in the noble tradition of Independence Day, Deep impact and Armageddon as a ludicrous ‘death from above’, global destruction sci-fi action flick in which the world can only be saved by jokey Americans. Astonishingly, this film is even more loopy than the films just mentioned. It comes from none other than Roland Emmerich who seems to have a vendetta against planet Earth as he tries to annihilate it in most of his movies.
Here, the Earth faces destruction when the moon mysteriously begins to fall from its orbit and threatens to plough into us. Our only hope lies with disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) his former colleague and now NASA Deputy Director Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry) and goofball scientist K C Houseman (John Bradley) who has a crazed theory about the reason for this impending calamity. Together they launch a mission to the moon to confront whatever is at the bottom of this outer space mystery.
Grafted on to this is one of the most ridiculous concepts we’ve ever seen in a sci-fi film, it’s almost as crazy as the rubbish spouted on Youtube conspiracy theory videos. Despite the bizarro set up, the film soon reverts to typical Roland Emmerich action hi-jinks and CGI-drenched spectacle as the Earth is pummelled by natural disasters. Some of the mass destruction set pieces, which include cities being swamped by humungous tidal waves and the planet being bombarded by blazing moon fragments, look reasonably impressive as do a few of the space sequences which have at least a touch of the pristine realism we saw in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Also, a strange, enormous, shape-shifting space monster that menaces the astronauts is fairly sinister.
In just about every other respect, though, this film is a giant ball of cheese. Most of the dialogue’s cringeworthy, the attempts at humour are charitably described as adolescent and the various subplots intended to create an emotional connection with the characters do not work.
Also, typical of Emmerich films, the structure and pacing are clumsy with unnecessary slow sequences and other segments weirdly rushed which makes it hard to connect with the drama and deprives many of the action sequences of excitement.
With pros like Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry leading the cast, the film still manages to cling to a shred of sci fi and dramatic credibility so it’s not quite as life-sapping as Armageddon or a Transformers film but it comes close. Most of the other cast members barely register on the screen and there’s a bizarrely brief cameo from Donald Sutherland.
This is every bit as silly as audiences might expect, only occasionally as exciting as they might hope and too often duller than they would wish. There’s the now-inevitable nod toward a proposed sequel at the end of the film but I’d be surprised if that eventuates.
Nick’s rating: **.
Genre: Sci fi/ action.
Classification: M.
Director(s): Roland Emmerich .
Release date: 3rd Feb 2022.
Running time: 120 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm right here on 88.3 Southern FM. Nick can also be heard on “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Film Show” podcast. http://subcultureentertainment.com/2014/02/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-film-show