‘Moonfall’ or — The Best Luchino Visconti/Mel Brooks Mash-Up Film Ever Made?

So I cried… at fucking ‘Moonfall (2021)??!!

Things weren’t looking too good for the first half hour or so of Roland Emmerich’s ‘Moonfall’ as all of the disaster director’s terrible tendencies are present and writ large (“writ small” will never be associated with this guy). So there’s the typical inane dialogue along with brain-damaging levels of scientific nonsense, clichéd characters, a ramrod turgescence for wholesale destruction, wilful infantilisation and a misguided and offensive inclination to give conspiracy theorists any sort of platform, even in a fictional setting.

So how come this shit left me moved to tears?

Firstly, this is by far Emmerich’s least offensive and cynical movie that he’s made yet. As usual entire cities are destroyed yet evacuations have taken place so although we’re witnessing large-scale carnage it never feels we’re being asked to get our collective rocks off at indiscriminate slaughter. Secondly, despite being almost identical in format to almost every other Emmerich movie ever made it never adopts that irritating stance of faux-seriousness that can hobble his films and stop them from truly becoming mindless fun. In fact, ‘Moonfall’ not only never comes close to any sense of posturing solemnity but actively wallows in its almost radically berserk levels of total insanity. This is a movie perfectly content to splash about in the toddler’s portion of the swimming pool which means there’s fun available if you want it but you might be washing the taste of piss out of your mouth afterwards.

So, all in all, not Emmerich’s worst movie, and certainly not his most obnoxious one, but surely that’s not saying much, right? I’d have said the same thing but I gradually found myself getting into the silliness of it all as it went along. Not enough to fully get me on board but enough to make it all somewhat bearable. Besides, it would have to take something REALLY unusual and unexpected to really win me over.

Then Donald Sutherland pops up and there’s a reference to Visconti’s ‘Death in Venice’ (the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth is used along with the concept of staying behind in a waterlogged environment whilst calamity approaches). Well, THAT’LL certainly do it! And not long after that there’s a reference to Mel Brook’s ‘Spaceballs’ (1987) and I’m sorry but ANY film that manages to acknowledge both ‘Spaceballs’ AND ‘Death in Venice’ is automatically going to have the capacity to get me into bed, have me throwing back the sheets and pulling the lube out.

After that ‘Moonfall’ is an unabashed exercise in delirious levels of stupidity that I had no idea cinema had the ability to convey. And one point a character even states that everything has now gone into “ludicrous mode” so you certainly can’t fault ‘Moonfall’ for a lack of self-awareness. And it was this self-awareness, along with a pretty energetic desire to deliver on such promised idiocy, that I suspect gradually won me over. And say what you want about ‘Moonfall’ being silly, laughable and daft but it is leagues better than, say, Brad Pitt’s ‘Ad Astra’ (2019) which was silly but also pretentious and dull so you tell me which out of those sounds more appealing to you?

As the movie went on and the ridiculousness kept piling up I found myself laughing hysterically until I had tears running down my cheeks. I honestly can’t remember the last time I howled so hard in a cinema. And it just kept on getting sillier!

By the end I was getting worried because I wasn’t sure if I was laughing so hard because the film was so stupid or if I was legitimately crying at the events on screen because I had fallen a little in love with what I was beholding and was genuinely starting to CARE about what I was watching. It was a fucking weird, but also highly cathartic, experience I’ll tell you that!

Maybe the film caught me in a particularly good mood, or maybe my latte had been spiked this morning, but I had a blast with ‘Moonfall’ and I can’t quite figure out why because it is, essentially, just like every other Emmerich movie ever made. But I think it works because he actually nails the fun factor here and that counts for a lot. Indeed, in these sorts of movies it practically counts for everything.

So yeah, I cried at ‘Moonfall’ and to such an extent that it would be a lie if I said they were all completely tears of laughter (maybe, say, around 99.999?), but it was certainly a genuine emotional reaction that’s for sure.

You know, I really can’t understand why the critical response to this movie has been so savage as, in my opinion, it’s the best Visconti/Mel Brooks mash-up film ever made!