Moonfall (M, 130 minutes). 2 stars
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We've had Downfall and Skyfall, so why not Moonfall?
This movie is somewhat reminiscent of the recent Don't Look Up but has more in common with a couple of its co-writer and director Roland Emmerich's earlier films, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.
Like those films, it's a big-budget extravaganza with a mix of big stars (though not too many here), familiar faces and lesser-known actors and an emphasis on special effects and spectacle rather than dialogue and characterisation.
In the prologue, an astronaut is mysteriously killed in space during a routine repair mission during a discussion of Toto's song Africa. The government rules this an accident, even though there's obviously more to it than that.
Years later, one of the surviving astronauts, Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) is a bigwig at NASA and the other, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), has long lived in disgrace, not having toed the party line. Both Brian and Jo are divorced from their respective spouses and parents - and Brian's teenage son Sonny (Charlie Plummer) is in trouble with the law.
Also having family issues is conspiracy theorist and science buff KC Houseman (John Harper), whose mother is increasingly senile. But he's on to something that's troubling on a much bigger scale - the moon has somehow been knocked from its orbit and is heading towards Earth, and the effects of this will be deadly long before impact.
The eccentric-sounding KC spouts what sounds like scientific gobbledygook (it was over my head, anyway, but it sounded impressive) and it's not until he finds Brian that he finds someone willing to listen to him.
Eventually, of course, KC, Brian and Jo must work together to try to save the planet. But there's more than simple (or even complex) physics going on here.
At least six international companies seem to have come together to make this film, which at a reported cost of nearly $200 million is one of the biggest "independent" movies ever made.
Given that price tag, you'd expect the actors to be an international mix, which they are, and the special effects to be state of the art, but these are a little mixed - mostly good, no huge clangers, but overall not as thrilling as might be hoped, even on a big Dendy cinema screen. That said, there are some effective moments of peril both on Earth and in space.
As is so often the case with disaster movies, characterisation is pretty thin and some of the actors don't get much to work with or much to do.
Sometimes this is by design - Donald Sutherland has what amounts to an odd cameo - but too often the dialogue and situations are basic and trite and moments that are presumably intended to be emotional don't have much impact.
Creating and eliciting genuine feelings don't seem to be among Emmerich's strengths or even concerns.
The actors themselves are fine, though most aren't top-tier stars, and there's little of the campy fun to be had in such 1970s style disaster movies as The Poseidon Adventure and The Swarm with their big-name casts and over-the-top situations and dialogue. Here, it seems intended to be mostly serious in a perfunctory sort of way, without even the silly swagger of Independence Day to enjoy.
The film frequently thumbs its nose at little things like physics and probability, sometimes ludicrously, which doesn't help suspension of disbelief. But despite all the shortcomings, fans of space stuff and mass destruction should have some fun.