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OR EMAILMovie Notes: Moonraker
Moonraker: High altitude.
Starring Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
= 2 stars
Amazon link
Roger Moore (James Bond)
Lois Chiles (Dr. Holly Goodhead)
Corinne Clery (Corinne Dufour)
On my quest to watch all the James Bond films, my viewing of Goldfinger marked the last of the Sean Connery bunch, so I’m moving ahead to the Roger Moore vehicles.
Moonraker features James Bond (Roger Moore) investigating Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), an evil genius who wants to destroy the world and rule over a new one of his making. He’s developing a nerve gas through his company Drax Industries. The investigation of “why” takes Bond to Venice and Brazil, and eventually into outer space, where Drax has built a space station, from which he plans to deploy his lethal gas onto Earth, killing everyone, and then colonizing the planet anew with his loyal people.
Moonraker is difficult for me to evaluate objectively - as I remember it fondly from childhood - but it’s probably an understatement to say it hasn’t aged well in my eyes. At times it feels like a campy comedy. It’s a bit jarring to have some fairly spectacular action sequences topped off with a pigeon double-take or Jaws (Richard Kiel) falling for a smiling blond while romantic music plays.
While Jaws meets his true love, Bond’s women are disappointingly tame. We have Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) who has a nice smile but no real spark. Corrine DuFour (Corinne Clery) is fair enough but she’s bumped off so early as to be inconsequential.
Moonraker’s biggest flaw is outer space as a setting purely to cash in on the Star Wars craze of the late seventies. Unfortunately, the execution is amiss, as things get cornier and campier as Bond ascends higher through the Earth’s atmosphere and the lasers start firing. The film awkwardly morphs into Logan’s Run or some other dystopian 70s film - amusing, but not Bond.
Another detriment is that Moonraker often seems to be a mish-mash of earlier adventures. Bond trapped in a G-Force machine reminds me of Thunderball, with Bond strapped to an exercise machine. Drax’s audacious plot recalls Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice. The gondola boat chase is similar to one Live and Let Die. The bevy of beauties in a secret hideout recalls On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the final space battle is a pale copy of Thunderball’s underwater sequences. I suppose with such a rich history of previous films, why not mine it - but you can practically see the James Bond Plot Generator churning out the situations.
Due to this paint-by-numbers and lack of a thrilling plot, the resulting action is pretty much devoid of tension. Bond merely steps outside and people try to kill him for no clear reason.
There are a few pluses, however. Jaws is an entertaining evil henchman. If you like exotic locations, this film has scads. Jungles, rivers, waterfalls, mountains, meadows, cliffs, Mayan temples, secret hideouts, palaces, and the emptiness of space.
So after all this analysis, Moonraker is pure spectacle and wall to wall action. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you could have replaced the Bond character with Steven Seagal and it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference.
Wikipedia: Moonraker
Categories: 2 Star Movies, General, James Bond, Movies :: Tags: ::
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"yep I like most of their stuff and love particular songs. definitely looking forward to whatever they release next." -
Enjoying reading your reviews, and for the large part agree. But criticizing Moonraker for copying parts of other Bonds doesn’t hold water with me, particularly given the examples. Exactly how does Drax’s scheme to eliminate human life on Earth and create a master race resemble Goldfinger’s plan to make some money by increasing the value of his gold? If any Bond film mimicked that premise it was A View To A Kill. And as far as You Only Live Twice’s plot goes, The Spy Who Loved Me was much closer in detail, and that’s a great Bond film!
Then you point to the fight in space being a rip off of Thunderball’s underwater fight. How so? Because they’re both quite slow?
If you wanted you could draw a hundred parallels between every Bond film, but it would be pointless. If the material is given a satisfying slant and the execution is good, it doesn’t really matter. Indeed, the producers are fond of saying that in the end each Bond movie is pretty much the same story with varying details.
I certainly agree that Moonraker is a poor Bond film, but for the main reasons you stated- its campness and flat characters.
Hi Koala Boy - yes its true that all the Bond films rehash similar things - I just felt like with Moonraker it was out of laziness and none of the rehashing added anything new - they just were like poor carbon copies.
In my mind I got the feeling all of these similarities had been done better in other bond films. The space fight was two large groups facing off in an unfamiliar environment. Drax was a businessman with a plot around a material (in Goldfinger, gold, Drax, gas, AVTAK, computer chips). But man was a boring villain acting wise.
It’s true, I don’t fault the bond films for taking similar material as long as its done in an exciting way (as in Spy Who Loved Me). It is a fine line to tread I think as the similarities are what makes the films “Bond”. Yet I feel like the films I liked the best were the ones that varied enough things - while sticking to the formula - to keep it interesting. I really got bored around this point of watching all the films.
Good point, hope you continue to read and comment. Ultimately it is all just opinion, so I leave the comments open so anybody can add their own two cents about my admittedly amateur reviews…!
As a Bond movie, it lasts for almost all of the pre-credits sequence, right up until Jaws crashes into the circus tent. Then the real circus begins. One example among many of the sheer silliness which ensues is the outer space fight, where the good guys shoot blue laser-beams, whilst the bad guy shoot red. Ideologically colour-coded laser beams, eh? And good on Jaws for finding love under the most trying of circumstances, but how come she’s up on Drax’s space station with all the beautiful people? Nobody else there is short, with glasses and pigtails. One could go on detailing this sort of thing, but at least it’s not boring. Not when one is laughing so much.