Moonfall review

MOONFALL:

LATEST ROLAND EMMERICH DISASTER IS BIG ON SPECTACLE, BUT EVEN MORE SO ON STUPIDITY! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4 

LIONSGATE

The moon is knocked out of orbit and causing a wave of disasters on Earth in Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall

 

            Director, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) is back to cause more chaos and destruction…only this time on the moon in Moonfall, the latest disaster film in his filmography. Emmerich is a very divisive filmmaker, some of his films are good albeit extremely flawed like Independence Day, Stargate, The Patriot, Anonymous, and Midway, while others such as 10,000 BC, Independence Day: Resurgence, and Godzilla…not so much. 

            But sometimes there comes a film from him that’s so ridiculous and chaotic that it’s fun because of how stupid it is like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and White House Down. Say what you will about his disaster films, but the guy knows if he’s going to make a dumb, overblown movie with a lot of destruction and carnage, he’s going to make a big dumb, overblown movie with a lot of destruction and carnage that are all style with little substance. 

            For the longest time, the 2009 movie, 2012 was my trophy winner for the absolute dumbest Roland Emmerich film at that point. With a lot of special effects (Which were quite impressive at the time), scientific inaccuracies, stock disaster movie characters, stilted acting from Amanda Peet, sequences that are so absurd and stupid that it becomes borderline self-parody, and some of the dumbest dialogue ever put into a script that make the screenplays for Michael Bay’s Transformers movies look like The Godfather. 

            Things changed when I went to see Moonfall, which is now officially the new trophy winner for the stupidest Roland Emmerich movie I’ve ever seen…and I loved every minute of it! If you thought 2012 was dumb, this manages to outdo that film in the idiocy department in every way imaginable, and it’s kind of amazing because of it. 

            After a tragic incident in space where a mysterious force attacks a 2011 Space Shuttle Mission and kills one of the crewmates, astronaut, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson-Watchmen, The Conjuring franchise, Aquaman) is fired because nobody believes him about the force that attacked them. Ten years later, it turns out the exact same entity has knocked the moon out of orbit, causing a string of disasters to occur on Earth and is on a collision course to wipe out all of humanity. 

              To combat this, Brian is reunited with his former colleague and NASA astronaut, Jo Fowler (Halle Berry-X-Men franchise, Swordfish, Monster’s Ball) and with the help of conspiracy theorist, K.C. Houseman (John Bradley-Game of Thrones, Patient Zero, Marry Me), the three of them set a course to the moon in order to stop the alien entity from destroying the planet, but these three heroes soon discover a dark secret about the moon and that it may not be as it seems. 

            The film also stars Michael Peña (End of Watch, Ant-Man 1 and 2, The Martian) as Brian’s rival, Tom Lopez, Charlie Plummer (Not Fade Away, All the Money in the World, Lean on Pete) as Brian’s son, Sonny Harper, Kelly Yu (So Young, The Ex-File 3: The Return of the Exes) as Michelle, Donald Sutherland (The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, The Hunger Games franchise) as Holdenfield, Eme Ikwuakor (Ink, Extant, Inhumans) as General Doug Davidson, Carolina Bartczak (Brick Mansions, X-Men: Apocalypse) as Brian’s ex-wife and Tom’s current wife, Brenda Lopez, and Maxim Roy (19-2, Shadowhunters, Bad Blood) as Gabriella Auclair. 

            Overall, Moonfall starts off as your typical dumb fun disaster movie with all the destruction and tropes you know and maybe love, but then as it goes on it somehow finds more ways to dig deeper and deeper into complete utter nonsense to the point where it’s practically an unintentional comedy that’s still a million times funnier than Pluto Nash. I guess imagine the movie, 2012 times eleven, but even that description doesn’t sum up exactly how completely bonkers this film gets. 

The dialogue is delightfully awful and reminiscent of the cheesy dialogue found in disaster films from the 1990s. It’s filled to the brim with clichéd lines and recycled exposition found in other films of the genre as if it was written by a computer (Some of my favorites include “The sand in the hourglass is running out!”, “I’m gonna get you the Hell off of this moon!”, “If the Earth can get a second chance, why not us?” and the always classic “God, help us all!”, I mean, it doesn’t have the brilliant “No more Pull-Ups!” closing line from 2012, but all these recycled lines spark a sense of nostalgia for when these kinds of films were at the height of their popularity that I just can’t help but love!), so if you got fond memories of dumb disaster movies from that decade then you will have a ball with this film. 

While nowhere near as effective as Independence Day, the destruction sequences are quite spectacular and look great on the big screen (Especially on IMAX!). From pieces of the moon smashing into buildings like meteors, tidal waves, tsunamis, and the moon sucking up cars, buildings, and debris as it gets closer like it’s a giant sky portal, all good sh*t and while all that craziness happens back on Earth, there’s a bunch of craziness on the moon as well. 

For starters, the alien force that knocks the moon out of orbit looks like it’s made out of Spider-Man’s nano-suit from the MCU or the human-made Transformers from Transformers: Age of Extinction, Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry’s characters are constantly bickering much like Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt from Twister even when they’re in space trying to stop the moon, the U.S. government’s backup plan is to literally nuke the entire moon (Because of course America would think that way!), and when they get to the moon some of the most bizarre and puzzling storytelling decisions are made that rival the dog outrunning explosion from Independence Day, aliens inventing the pyramids from Stargate, and John Cusack being an indestructible force of nature in 2012, I can’t say anymore without going into spoilers, but let’s just say it makes whatever Michael Bay did with the moon in Transformers: Dark of the Moon look a lot more practical and realistic by comparison. 

Most of the acting from the main characters is fine especially from Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson trying to make this silly dialogue sound natural and John Bradley getting a few laughs as probably Emmerich’s best conspiracy theorist character since Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day and not nearly as annoying as Matthew Broderick from Godzilla. 

I was very entertained by Moonfall as a “So bad it’s good” disaster flick that will bring back memories of films from the 90s and onwards, but if you’re looking for an intelligent and thought-provoking sci-fi film, stick with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, or Gravity because this is pure stupidity at its absolute finest.