Moonfall – Film Review

The world stands on the brink of annihilation when a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit and sends it hurtling toward a collision course with Earth. With only weeks before impact, NASA executive Jocinda “Jo” Fowler teams up with a man from her past and a conspiracy theorist for an impossible mission into space to save humanity.

We all know that, obviously, watching a legitimately amazing film is one of the best feelings in the world. When given the choice to watch a fantastic, highly-rated film or one that got terrible reviews and is universally regarded as being awful, you will almost always pick the former. There have been an array of excellent films that have come out so far in 2022, but to be honest, it was great to simply sit back and stare in bewilderment and hilarity at Roland Emmerich‘s absolutely ridiculous popcorn blockbuster Moonfall.

Or, at least, a little bit of it because eventually the film’s behemoth length of two-hours-and-ten minutes really puts a toll on you. This running time would feel like nothing in a legitimately remarkable film, but Moonfall is anything but. The first twenty minutes serve as standard setup as we get introduced to our lead characters, and of course, there is already a trope introduced. The guy that swears to everyone that something is horribly wrong but they choose to not listen to him until it’s far too late.

For the remainder of the running time, we are treated with one of the most confusingly bad, overstuffed action films in ages that only gets more riddled with tropes as it goes along. All of the film’s problems just made me wonder why in the world so many A-list actors agreed to take part in it. Let’s be real, Emmerich isn’t exactly known for making the most incredible films. Did any of the actors actually read the script before signing on to the project? After watching the movie, I’m honestly not sure.

Patrick Wilson delivers a good performance here as Brian Harper, although his character is one that is deeply uninteresting. We learn early on that he is a former NASA astronaut but we learn little else about him throughout the course of the film. Halle Berry is also good in her role, as is Game of Thrones star John Bradley. It’s just a huge shame that these massively talented stars got reduced to roles that don’t give them much depth.

But, obviously, a lot of people are going to watch this movie in the hopes of seeing some crazy, end-of-the-world-style action, and while you do get that here, it’s filmed so poorly and incompetently that even action junkies will likely be bored and exhausted after the first hour. It’s essentially a non-stop rollercoaster ride of complete and utter nonsense the entire way through, but for me, there was only so much of it I could take before wanting to turn the movie off and just forget it even existed.

Moonfall has all the usual problems of a Roland Emmerich movie and then some. It’s a bloated, outrageously dumb, poorly written mess of a film that can’t even offer some fun, turn-off-your-brain action.