I caught up with Roland Emmerich’s “Moonfall,” which should absolutely sweep the 2023 Razzies, and if it doesn’t, that means that whatever film actually surpasses its mediocrity would have to be Ed Wood-like in stature. This is far worse than any Emmerich movie deserves to be. It’s inferior to his past nadirs, which include “Universal Soldier,” “Godzilla,” “The Thirteenth Floor,” “10,000 BC” and “2012.”
The gist of the “Moonfall” plot reads almost like every cliche of every Roland Emmerich movie. There’s a reason he’s known as the “master of disaster.” A mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with our own planet. Our characters have just two weeks to save the world.
Halle Berry is a former astronaut who devises a plan to rescue the planet, but only Patrick Wilson’s Brian and a conspiracy theorist (John Bradley) believe her. But, hey, guess what? It turns out we don’t even know much about the moon because secrets have been kept on it by government this entire time. Maybe the conspiracy theorists were right all along.
Meanwhile, a group of cardboard characters get thrown in as subplots: Berry’s teenage son and Wilson’s estranged troubled child, Sonny (Charlie Plummer). They get thrown into unnecessary drama by Emmerich, on their way to a safe zone. Oh, and Donald Sutherland shows up for a useless cameo. At least in “Ad Astra” his character cameo had some kind of backstory and depth — here Sutherland is solely used for exposition.
You feel bad for Berry and Wilson, two notable actors — they have to spout cheesy dialogue while trying to pretend that the world is coming to an end.
I will say this about “Moonfall:” it doesn’t take itself too seriously and yet, has no sense of humour whatsoever. It’s pretty absurd stuff, and the visual effects look terrible — the film’s budget has been reported to be around $150 million. What a waste.
Co-written by Harald Kloser and Spencer Cohen, the narrative has everything you’d expect from Emmerich — big cities destroyed, parents separated from their children — and the same amount of tension as watching paint dry on the wall.
In his three-decade career as a filmmaker, the German-born Emmerich gave us two half-decent films: 1996’s “Independence Day” and 2000’s “The Patriot.” With “Moonfall,” he’s made the worst movie of his life, and that’s saying something. [F]
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.