‘Moonfall’ review: Dir. Roland Emmerich (2022)

After destroying the world multiple times over the years, master of the genre Roland Emmerich returns with an out-of-this-world epic which truly had me scratching my head after exiting the multiplex on Wednesday evening. Overladen with customary special effects and just as much confusing exposition, Moonfall is a bloated, cliche-ridden, ridiculous sci-fi that you urge to do better than it does.

The film kicks off ten years in the past, Patrick Wilson’s Brian Harper and Halle Berry’s Jocinda Fowler up in space on a ‘mission’. Toto’s iconic ’80s track, Africa is audible on the soundtrack, which instantly took me back to 1996 and arguably Emmerich’s best film, Independence Day. I refer to the scene early on where trouble starts to brew and REM’s ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ ironically playing in the background. Sadly, that’s where comparisons of greatness end. The group of astronauts are attacked by a buzzy swarm-like alien force, completely taking out one of them with the two aforementioned hammering back to Earth to explain what happened.

Fast forward those ten years and Harper and Fowler have gone their separate ways. Harper is in the dog house from NASA fully getting the blame for a human error on that fateful mission, while Fowler has climbed the ranks of the government space agency. Both are divorced from their spouses, Harper bumming around L.A. but somehow managing to just about to hold onto an apartment a stone’s throw from the Griffith Observatory. Fowler has a great job, and a great kid, but also a largely absent former other-half in Doug (Eme Ikwuakor) who is a high flyer in the department of defense. Harper’s wife has also moved on and their shared son, Sonny (Charlie Plummer) has just been arrested in a high speed chase across town.

Keeping up? There’s more. Across state, KC Houseman (a stand-out John Bradley) is onto something. While working as a cleaner is the University of California, he’s stumbled upon some information that the moon has somehow managed to change course and is three weeks away from crashing into it and ending mankind. The rest of the film plays out with our heroes coming together to save the day, and indeed the world from extinction.

It’s safe to say that Moonfall is one of the biggest films of the year so far and, looking purely at its scope, ambition and indeed budget, it really is aiming for the stars and should be landing on our screens in the height of summer. I turned up after two years of not seeing these films on the big screen, popcorn in hand and paying audience behind me. Expectation was a little high and I’m sad to say I was more than disappointed.

As you can tell by my lengthy description, there’s a lot going on early-on, and the filmmakers spend a lot of time setting up proceedings before we’re treated to what we’ve really come for – to see the Earth utterly decimated by forces out of our control. The great thing about Independence Day was that it wasted no time in getting us to the action, and most of Emmerich’s subsequent films have delivered on their promise, but I felt a little empty after seeing this one; more perplexed than having the feeling that I had experienced a fulfilling popcorn movie.

There are some nice ideas towards the end but it feels like a struggle getting there and, while the three main actors do their best with the material, some of the performances come across hammy due to the written dialogue. Though, Wilson is great in a proper ‘movie star’ leading role, and I did like the moment when Berry’s phone lit up as she slept with simply ‘NASA’ showing up as the caller.

The action set pieces are impressive, and superbly executed, but we have seen all of this before. Also, the the moon messing about with the gravity on Earth was a nice idea and those scenes absolutely rocked – shame there were not more of them.

While I knew that the film wasn’t going to set the world alight with originality, I expected perhaps a little more in terms of the over-the-top action, and those cliches to be pushed to almost send the film into self-parody territory. That didn’t quite happen despite early promise.

It’s preposterous, but not preposterous enough to make it stand out as a rewarding popcorn experience.

Moonfall is now on general release.