Rating of
2/4
I'm Over This Moon
Chris Kavan - wrote on 04/27/22
Roland Emmerich has made a career out of destroying the world. Aliens, climate change, tectonic shifts - pick your poison and watch the world burn. Moonfall is just another notch on his belt and, frankly, the most ridiculous premise yet.
Early on we watch astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Alan Marcus (Frank Fiola) working on a satellite under the command of Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry) - when things go wrong following the appearance of a shifting cloud of something. Marcus is thrown to drift in space and Harper, with little help from Fowler (who was knocked out) is disgraced for his fantastical version of events.
Fast forward years later where NASA is made aware that the moon's orbit is changing - not only that, be in a scant amount of time it will crash into the Earth, but not before things like tidal and gravity shifts, not to mention huge pieces of the broken moon raining down, will decimate the cities and people below. In tandem, conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (Game of Thrones vet John Bradley) has come to the same conclusion - even as he can get no one to listen to him. While NASA tries to quietly figure out things, Houseman blows all the plans up when he releases his information and it goes viral - and mass panic. But of course the moon crashing into Earth isn't the big story - no Houseman's theory that the moon is a construct built by aliens turns out to be true - in a way - more that an advanced civilization built - one brought nearly to their own extinction because of AI that became self-aware and, in true movie fashion, decided humans are not worthy of existing, let alone serving.
Thus Moonfall becomes a mix of end-of-the-world destruction and technology run amok. Oh, and also they throw in some family drama as well in the form of Harper's incarcerated son, Sonny (Charlie Plummer), who he shares custody with ex-wife Brenda (Carolina Bartczak) who has a new husband in Tom Lopez (Michael Peña) who also has two young daughters. Oh, and throw in a random Chinese exchange student (Wenwen Yu) as well.
The film tries to make things work but aside from the destro-porn special effects - and some decent humor from Houseman - it's a bit of a mess. But, hey, you get a Donald Sutherland cameo, so there's that. The film shoe-horns in a lot of the drama and for some reason name-drops Elon Musk way too frequently for my liking. Plus, I'm still trying to figure out if it's pro-conspiracy or anti-technology or vice-versa. The film wants to do a lot of things all at once but can never decide on where it's going. If you like action with a lot of destruction (aka, a typical Roland Emmerich film), you'll at least enjoy this - just don't go looking for much of a deeper meaning beneath the surface and roll with it.
