K.T Simpson
Dumber than the guy who started up the flyscreens-for-wetsuits brand but passing muster as an impressive commercial for the wizards at Scanline VFX, Pixomondo, DNEG and Framestore, the latest film from ‘disaster film’ specialist Roland Emmerich (“2012”, “Independence Day”, “The Day After Tomorrow”) would likely have found more smack-bang in the middle of the 1998 summer movie season – when those fluffy, giant space-rock movies, like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact”, were welcomed with sweaty palms by teenage cinemagoers.
These days, what with even the splashy superhero movie relying more on solid scripting and award-worthy performances, an Emmerich-helmed wooden wonder-for-the-eyes feels a little old-hat.
“Moonfall”, scripted by Emmerich, Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen, sees the Moon knocked out of orbit – by a mysterious something-something – and a couple of astronauts sent up to fix it.
Running longer than a pandemic protest, and bogged down by large chunks of dull exposition and a-lot-of-nothing, Emmerich’s film has one main thing going for it : special effects. Like the German filmmaker’s breakthrough, “Independence Day”, a high-point for VFX in the ‘90s, “Moonfall” has some astonishingly great computer-created stuff in it. From the digitally designed moon itself to scenes of mass destruction below, the money’s all on the screen. And thanks to the presence of A-list hot props, Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson, a lot of the human stuff is also a notch above tolerable. If there’s two things Emmerich knows how to do and how to do well it’s blow-up cities spectacularly, and cast very appealing marquee names.
Still, razzle-dazzle and all, the film does feel like a slug at times, particularly with a script as messy and patchy as this, and lines like “This planet has suffered five extinctions. This is going to be the sixth.”, only serve as a reminder that the time for slick, takes-itself-too-seriously ‘shit’ died when Marvel become a movie monster.
