Moonfall

A tedious and mostly interminable disaster epic, Moonfall details the chaos that ensues after the moon falls out of its orbit and follows several characters, including Patrick Wilson’s Brian Harper, Halle Berry’s Jocinda Fowler, and John Bradley’s K.C. Houseman, as they attempt to prevent the end of the world. It’s an almost inherently compelling premise that is, by and large, employed to disastrously underwhelming and uninvolving effect by Roland Emmerich, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen, delivers a pervasively slick endeavor that remains hopelessly unable to capture the viewer’s attention throughout – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by an absence of engaging characters (ie they’re all just so bland) and Emmerich’s overuse of computer-generated imagery. (There is, in terms of the latter, not a single scene here that doesn’t look like it was filmed entirely against a green screen.) It is, as such, not surprising to note that the increasingly ludicrous narrative grows less and less interesting (and more and more interminable) as time progresses, which ensures that the predictably action-heavy climax is hardly able to pack the exciting, satisfying punch one might’ve anticipated (ie it feels endless, ultimately). The final result is an often distressingly dull piece of work that squanders its seemingly foolproof setup from the word go, and it is, in the end, difficult (if not impossible) to believe that Moonfall is from the same man behind such better-than-average genre fare as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012.

* out of ****