Absolute sci-fi garbage of the highest order, 2022’s MOONFALL is a big-cast disaster epic that would make Irwin Allen proud. But like Allen did with his mega-box office bomb “When Time Ran Out”, disaster flick director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) has gone back to the well one too many times.
Cliches abound, but so do the big budget action scenes.
Conspiracy nut KC Houseman (John Bradley, Samwell Tarly on “Game of Thrones) has discovered that the moon’s orbit has changed and its suddenly on course for the Earth. No one will listen.
NASA’s Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) is suddenly thrust into power when the story breaks and her former fellow astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) finds potential validation from the space mission disgrace he suffered ten years earlier.
Donald Sutherland does one of those shadowy government figures he’s played so well for decades, and Michael Pena brings some laughs as a Lexus dealership owner who seems to mostly serve the story as a shameless recurring plug for the auto maker.
There are scenes that will remind you of Emmerich’s other “lets destroy all the major landmarks in the US” scenes (from much better movies), but at least he has the sense of humor to self-reference some earlier famous scenes.
The final half hour is a flashback to the original big screen “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and surely any fans of those Vger sequences will be in heaven. I saw references to “The Shining” and “JFK” and “Spaceballs”
But the longer it goes, the sillier it gets.
By the finale, MOONFALL is trying to be way more serious than it’s earned the right to be, before falling into a final couple shots that are dumb as a box of rocks.
I laughed quite a bit, but probably only half those scenes were supposed to be funny.
Anytime Bradley’s on screen it’s an enjoyable dumb movie, but alas, he needs more screen time. Berry just needs a better agent.
Costing $150 million, its visually a hell of a lot of fun to look at from beginning to end.
But the dialogue…the characters…. the disjointed story…audiences smelled this one coming from a mile away.
Turns out the moon is made of cheese and so is the screenplay.
MOONFALL gets a D.
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