Saturday, October 13, 2012

Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979) Review

Hey, remember at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me that it said  "Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only"? They lied. Moonraker was the next Bond film to see release. Why the change? Well, after Star Wars dominated the box office, they felt that they could beat it with a new Bond film...IN SPACE! Was it a good decision? Let's find out!

When a spaceship is hi-jacked in outer space (like in You Only Live Twice), Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to investigate the company that create said spaceship, Drax Industries. Bond discovers that the villain this time is the owner of Drax Industries, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), who wishes to destroy Earth and relocate the greatest human minds elsewhere. Bond teams up with Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) in order to stop Drax from destroying the Earth and fighting off his henchman, Jaws (Richard Keil)...yeah, he's back!

Yes, Jaws is back and even has his own sub-story...he finds love! Isn't that...cute? Either way, the indestructible Jaws is as good as he was last time and his fight with Bond is one of the best fights in the series. I keep complaining that there are some forgettable Bond girls, this is no different. The only bit I remember is anti-gravity sex...which is awesome. Drax is only a good villain because of that fact he's affiliated with space...again, which is awesome.

It all sounds good right? WRONG! This film is stupid, even stupider than previous ones! Case in point: the gondola scene. Basically, Bond rides around in a gondola with wheels. That itself is stupid but the fact that they edited a pigeon to do a double take when seeing Bond. Wow, that is hands down the stupidest thing in the entire series. Also, Bond in space doesn't work. There was no reason for it and just comes off as a stupid gimmick.

Moonraker had guts to go up against Star Wars but the idea was stupid, some scenes were VERY stupid and some of the characters don't hold up against previous or upcoming ones. Really, they should have just gone straight to For Your Eyes Only and missed this one out entirely or saved it for later (I think this would have made a good Pierce Brosnan film...just look at Nightfire). This is easily one of Roger Moore's worst ones.


Verdict:
6/10
A silly idea that is met with some very stupid scenes and characters. It's nice to see Jaws back though.

No comments:

Post a Comment