There are no signs of intelligent life in "Moonfall," a preposterous disaster movie that casts the moon — as in the actual moon in the sky, the one man landed on in 1969 — in the role of the villain.
"Oh (expletive), the moon is rising!" That tasty nugget of dialogue comes near the climax of the film, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. There are so many more deliciously bad lines to chew on, many of them delivered by a completely checked-out Halle Berry, who serves them up with the same inflection she might dictate a lunch order.
"Everything we thought we knew about the nature of our existence has just been thrown out the window," says Jo Fowler (Berry), like it's just another Tuesday at the office. She's an astronaut who is part of a discovery that the moon's orbit has shifted and it's now on a collision course with Earth in T-minus three weeks.
Jo, along with disgraced former astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman ("Game of Thrones'" John Bradley, approximating comic relief), are now out to save the world. And to do that, they've gotta get to the moon before the moon gets to us.
But wait, there's more! There's a thread about how the moon is actually hollow and it was built by aliens (a side character voices a theory that the moon is actually full of produce items, like potatoes), and there's a side story about Harper's estranged son, Sonny (Charlie Plummer) who somehow winds up in a televised freeway chase with police. It's required that a stately actor makes at least a token appearance in movies like this, and Donald Sutherland shows up so briefly that I forgot he was in the movie.
Serving up this hearty plate of ludicrousness is German-born disaster movie maestro Roland Emmerich, who has pounded Earth into the ground in films such as "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012." Here, there's not a minute that feels in any way authentic or even the slightest bit believable, even in Emmerich's own hastily constructed version of reality; "Don't Look Up's" doomsday scenario was more plausible, and that movie was a satire.
Without even getting into Emmerich's (he co-wrote the script with Spenser Cohen and Harald Kloser) "Interstellar"-like final act or his depiction of A.I. as a big black blob, there's little to recommend here outside of campy, accidental laughs. It's fitting, if not entirely intended: Emmerich has finally made a true disaster of a movie.
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'MOONFALL'
Grade: D
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, disaster action, strong language, and some drug use)
Running time: 2:00
Where to watch: In theaters Friday
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