There is an art to making big, dumb and loud action/disaster movies, where they might not be the best movie ever made, but they’re still entertaining. This movie doesn’t quite reach that level.
“Moonfall” is the recent science fiction disaster film from writer and director Roland Emmerich, famous for “Independence Day” and his last film “Midway.” It was written by Emmerich along with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen.
The film follows disgraced astronaut Brian Harper after NASA, his co-pilot Jo Fowler and the world don’t believe the extraterrestrial phenomenon that he witnessed in space. Ten years later, the moon is thrown off orbit, which conspiracy theorist KC Houseman discovers first. Now, Harper and Houseman must work with NASA to discover the moon’s secrets and save the earth.
“Moonfall” is a boring, poorly-paced disaster movie with no real thought put into any aspect of the film. It exists solely to make big things go boom and convey big science fiction concepts with no real understanding of how anything works. It’s hollow, to say the least.
The film stars Halle Berry as Jo Fowler, Patrick Wilson as Brian Harper and John Bradley as KC Houseman. The three leads range from mediocre to bad performances. Sometimes, they’re okay, doing the bare minimum to get through the scene and progress through the nonsensical plot. But for the rest of the time, there is no clear drive or incentive for these actors, leaving their performances with much to be desired.
It doesn’t help that their characters are overused character archetypes, with no room for growth or unique dynamics. The three leads fill the Emmerich character quota: the strong independent woman that still needs the help of men to do anything, the disgraced and disgruntled man who used to be one of the best and the quirky scientist that no one believes until they prove their own theories.
At the end of the day, the actors are doing everything that they need to in order to fill these archetypes. It just so happens that their performances are bad, just like the thinly written characters that they portray.
Along with that, the story makes little to no sense. It’s easy to follow, as things and events follow a cohesive structure from point A to point B.
However, if you take even a single second to think about literally anything that happens, the entire story falls apart. None of the science makes sense, the whole mission is slapped together and the decision-making within some scenes is baffling.
Getting away from the headache of a plot, one of the only decent aspects of the movie is some of the special effects. For the most part, they look good with some interesting visuals scattered throughout. Mostly, the big technological alien and the moon’s overpowering presence as debris crashes into earth look really good. However, there are awkward usages of green screen in some scenes that really stood out.
It doesn’t help either that the cinematography is boring. It’s competent at its best, but the lighting and camera work throughout the film doesn’t do anything interesting. It often looks cheap with lighting that barely matches what the film is going for. The camera swoops around sometimes, mostly during the okay action sequences, but it’s still doing the bare minimum to make a film. Overall, it’s fine.
On the other hand, the editing is awful. There is no real sense of rhythm within the film, as it cuts between different shots in a mismatched pattern. The movie will cut too quickly from a shot or stay too long on something it didn’t need to, with no true in-between in the film.
It creates a disorienting experience at different points in the film. This also ties into the pacing of the film, which is equally sporadic. It takes too long to get anything done, so by the halfway point it already feels like the film has been trudging ahead for a long time.
“Moonfall” is another bad disaster movie from Roland Emmerich. It does nothing new or interesting, leaving it an empty shell of a film with no real purpose behind it other than to see something blow up. At the end of the day, it’s a pointless and mindless movie.
There is an argument to be made about how much anything written about this movie matters. Why should the story make sense if it’s just for entertainment? Why can’t you turn your brain off and just enjoy it? The movie is not supposed to be good, so why criticize it so heavily?
To that, I did turn my brain off and enjoyed it. Sitting in the theater, I had a fun experience watching this bad film move from beginning to end.
But even then, everything wrong with the movie still stood out. The jokes don’t land, the story didn’t make sense and the filmmaking just isn’t that good. A large portion of my enjoyment consisted of laughing at the movie, whether that was because the movie did something stupid or because a one-liner was so bad it became funny in turn.
Despite being able to turn off any critical thinking motors within our brains, why should that be the level that we must sink to in order to enjoy something? Why should we have to dumb ourselves down to make something that’s bad, good?
In that sense, a movie like this is a disgrace. Even when it’s enjoyable, we shouldn’t have to stall any and all intelligence in order to find even a crumb of fun within a movie. I don’t recommend paying your hard-earned money to witness this disaster of a film.
Rating: 2 out of 5.
