MOONFALL is everything that a Roland Emmerich film should be. There are dazzling special effects. There are several plot threads happening simultaneously that occasionally show a puckish confluence. There are parent-child issues. And there is a huuuuuuuuuge story. This time, it’s the curious case of the moon shifting its orbit in a way that defies the known laws of physics in order to plunge into the Earth. Plus, conspiracy nerds proven correct, and vindication for an astronaut hero caught up in the tentacles of government suppression of alien technology. A little something for everyone, presented at breakneck speed.
The hero is Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), who is happily tending to some chores during shuttle Endeavour’s January 2011 flight when the unexpected flies from the depths of space. It takes out his buddy (Frank Fiola, aka this film’s Red Shirt), and renders his work wife, mission navigator Jocinda Fowler, unconscious. During the resulting hearings, NASA blames Harper for the Red Shirt’s death, while also dismissing his story about the unexpected something. His relationship with Fowler is fractured when she fails to back him up (never mind she was unconscious as the time), as is his marriage to Michelle (Kelly Reilly) and relationship with his son, Sonny (Charley Plummer).
Time, alas, does not heal all wounds, and ten years later (that’s the present for you and me), Harper is leading a financially precarious existence after being scapegoated by NASA. His actual wife has remarried very well to a wealthy car tycoon, and his son has fallen in with the wrong crowd, resulting in an arrest without bail. But never fear, the most unlikely of saviors arrives on the scene on the person of KC Houseman (cuddly John Bradley), a portly Brit in non-ironic horn rims. He’s convinced that the moon is a megastructure, and, thanks to his skill at infiltrating university professor’s offices, has proof positive that our satellite has started a death spiral into the Earth. With no other way to contact NASA, he crashes a talk Harper is scheduled to give at the Griffith Observatory, only to have Harper toss the printouts into the nearest recycling bin.
Of course Harper is eventually convinced that Houseman is right, which is right before Emmerich and company destroy Los Angeles. Never fear, though this is very near the beginning of the flick, New York will once again feel the wrath of Emmerich and meet its own destruction later. If you’re a fan of Emmerich’s work, you will realize that this is anything but a spoiler.
As is the custom in this director’s work, there is family drama aplenty, from Harper’s contentious relationship with his ex-wife and her new husband (Michael Peña), to Fowler’s contentious relationship with her ex-husband (Eme Ikwuakor), the military guy whose first instinct is to nuke the moon and damn the fallout. That would be both the radioactive type and the city-sized boulders that will rain down on our home planet. As the humans try to figure out how to save the world in the three weeks left to them, Harper and Fowler will add trying to save their respective sons from the haywire weather, surging plate tectonics, and rogue gravity waves that threaten life as we know it even before the moon slams into them.
Further of course, it becomes imperative for the USA to return to the moon, using the help of an international cadre of scientists, where even more startling secrets are revealed, as is a terrifying cautionary note about AI.
Is the dialogue uneven, veering suddenly from piquant to maudlin? Yes. But despite that, this is a seriously fun time at the movies. The science and pseudo-science are gleefully mismatched as we watch such delights as a jeep, a helicopter, >and< a space shuttle outrunning those rogue gravity waves, and a cat’s hygiene faux pas provides the mechanism for Harper and KC to meet up. Theirs is an inspired pairing, with Harper’s slow burn and right-stuff providing a perfect juxtaposition for KC’s effulgence and emotional eagerness to be hanging out with the cool kids. KC provides spot-on wish fulfillment for conspiracy aficionados and space nerds who can both see themselves in him and live out their fantasies through this everyman. There’s also a nice chemistry between Harper and Fowler, starting with good-natured bickering over a song’s lyrics, to the unspoken but palpable respect and tension that they feel after being reunited when neither of their lives turned out as planned, even if the lines the script affords them are less than, ahem, stellar.
Then there are the sly call-outs. Is that wallpaper in an LA hotel inspired by the carpet at the Overlook in THE SHINING? Oh yeah. And it’s lovely to see Donald Sutherland once again deliver the speech about a government coverup as he did in JFK. Please enjoy discovering the others for yourself. Also please enjoy the precis KC delivers to a group of schoolchildren about the clues that convinced him about the moon’s true nature, and how those initially mocking kids come around to his way of thinking.
MOONFALL is way too much cheesy fun, speeding along affirming the pre-eminence of family while also finding new ways to bend physics into blockbuster entertainment. It’s action-adventure at its best with characters that will worm their ways into your heart. Mostly.
Your Thoughts?