Moonfall (2022 | USA | 120 minutes | Roland Emmerich)
A movie that throws the entire kitchen sink at the screen, Moonfall is director Roland Emmerich doing his very best to overwhelm us with a spectacle so we ignore the tedious sideshow that is the rest of the story.
To his credit, he mostly succeeds. Moonfall is a preposterous, clichéd film that is more heavily wrapped in over-the-top action than anything Emmerich has done and likely ever will. It packs all the destruction of his prior work from volcanic explosions to massive earthquakes and giant tsunamis. Only this time, it is all happening at the same time as a ludicrous science fiction plot that is used as an excuse for yet more destruction. To top it all off, Emmerich provides a series of shallow family dramas mostly centered around ex-husbands and wives that are among his staples. If you haven’t ever seen one of his films, this would be the best get an idea of everything he has ever done. It is deeply flawed and far from his most well-constructed work, though it is certainly his most unrestrained.
The story (hah!) follows a group of astronauts who will have to stop the moon from, you guessed it, falling into the Earth and destroying the planet. There is the head of NASA Jocinda Fowl (Halle Berry), disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), and conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley) who, if we are being honest here, all are made secondary to the cascading disaster that is the film. Each of them gets surface-level and generally disposable family ties that take the place of actual character development. It is hilariously repetitive. Somehow, Wilson and Berry are each playing characters who have ex-partners as well as children that they need to somehow protect back on Earth. It feels like the film simply decided to duplicate a stock character without anyone really caring.
Of course, the reason you watch a film like Moonfall is not for a study of the human condition or the fully realized characters. You watch it to see the moon wreak havoc on everything we know and love as the puny humans try to survive. If that is what you are looking for and you are willing to overlook the thin characters with their trite storylines, then this is the film for you. It takes a while to get to all the good stuff. The early bits really drag on far longer than they should. After a while, you wonder what the point is when all these characters are so superficial that they often have to speak their motivations and feelings aloud. It clearly is meant to make us care for them in some way, though you never really do as they never feel like actual characters.
This becomes almost laughable and part of the fun as you see talented, respected actors have to say the silliest lines imaginable. Berry in particular spends much of the first hour doing her darndest in delivering lines that are so clichéd you almost have to appreciate the audacity of Emmerich writing them for her to say. Yes, you as the head of NASA have convinced us that we have to throw out everything we know. A brief conversation she has with a mysterious scientist, played by a woefully underutilized Donald Sutherland, exists entirely to jam as many of these platitudes in as possible. Wilson doesn’t get much better as he is a one-dimensional, disgraced dad who likes to fix his car, drink while listening to the radio, and not pay his rent. These gripes would be ones I typically would avoid, but when you’re spending all this time at the beginning of the film with these people it is hard not to grow exhausted by their complete shallowness.
You may be reading this review and thinking to yourself “well, that doesn’t sound very good at all.” You would be absolutely correct, though a filmmaker like Emmerich defies any such simple binaries. For part of the film, it seems like he is in on the joke. This does not refer to the actual humor attempted in the film, which is abysmal. It mostly had me wishing I would never have to hear the same Elon Musk joke in different versions multiple times ever again. No, there is a comedic edge to be found in the visual aspects unfolding before you. When it all really begins to kick off and the moon comes over the horizon with a menacing air, it just feels so absurd that it is impossible not to laugh. The entire thing is beyond ridiculous and Emmerich is smart enough to know how to make the most of how bonkers it gets. Don’t worry about anything making sense, ignore all the bizarre conveniences, and you can embrace what Moonfall is.
Because, despite all that is just downright dumb about the first part, it is fun dumb. The schlock and excesses are why you go to see a movie like this. The further it goes down the path of over-the-top spectacle the more it somehow wins you over. It is a shame it takes so long to get there, but once it gets into orbit you begin to really get won over. It still cuts unnecessarily back to Earth quite frequently where it relies upon contrivances to keep you engaged, though the space stuff is where it really just lets it all loose.
I found myself shaking my head multiple times at the revelations about why everything is happening, though mostly in sheer awe of its big swing than in disapproval. It certainly feels like this is the film that Emmerich wanted to make as it is hard to imagine anything more chaotic. The unhinged spectacle is enough to make you mostly forgive all the nonsense you had to wade through in order to get there. By the time it reaches its climax, you will, for better or worse, be seeing a truly unfiltered Emmerich film.
You can watch Moonfall in theaters starting Feb. 4.
Image courtesy Lionsgate.