Review 137: Moonraker

Moonraker is the craziest Bond film ever made and possibly the silliest as well.

Very loosely based on the third Bond novel Moonraker by Ian Fleming, James Bond (Roger Moore) investigates the theft of a space shuttle, leading him to Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the owner of the shuttle's manufacturing firm. Along with space scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), Bond follows the trail from California to Venice, Rio de Janerio, and the Amazon rain forest, and finally into outer space itself to prevent a plot to wipe out the world population and to re-create humanity with a master race.

The plot is so ridiculous that it goes way out of it's depth for a 007 movie and to the point where it stretches credibility. it gets impossible to suspend your disbelief.
Initially Eon were going to follow up The Spy Who Loved Me with For Your Eyes Only, however following the success of Star Wars they decided to adapt Moonraker instead. The plot is also extremely, loosely based on the third novel of the 007 books which followed bond investigating multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax whose building Moonraker, Britain's first nuclear missile project I guess it was easy to turn a story about a missile into an outerspace adventure but the weird thing is it takes way to long to get to all of it.

Returning, Director Lewis Gilbert (his third and final film in the series) direction is clueless, while he does an effective job at building intrigue and suspense, he compensates all that for cheap laughs and silliness at the expense of a silly script.
The pacing is leisure-maybe too leisure for this type of movie and it's not until the third act that we finally get into space. It ends up being a lot of build up for some silly, but genuinely spectacular payoff. There are also just way too many cheap laughs thrown in such as Bond's gondola turning into a Hovercraft and the title song is cheesy and is not up to Shirley Bassey's usual standards.

It is, however, an expensive, good-looking, well made film, the cinematography is gorgeous and captures the lush beauty of the locations, the locations (Venice, Rio) are stunning, the production design is epic (Drax's space station looks amazing), the costumes are majestic, the props are very crafted, the score by John Barry is beautiful, the special effects and model work for the Moonraker shuttles are brilliant, there are some great moments of tension e.g. when Bond is trapped in a centrifuge chamber, the sound effects are terrific and the action scenes, while silly at times, were exciting, thrilling and fun too watch, even the laser battles at the end.

To be honest, the acting is a mixed bag, Roger Moore mostly sleepwalks through the role and even he himself looks bafled with the idea of sending James Bond into space.

Lois Chiles is actually, pretty competent as Holly Goodhead, she's clearly Bond's equal. Smooth, clever, charismatic, cunning, tough, intelligent and brave.

The film also sees the return of Jaws (Richard Kiel) from the last film, but while in The Spy Who Loved Me Jaws was one of the best parts of the film, in Moonraker he's reduced to the comic relief (e.g. theirs a scene in the opening teaser were he and 007 fight while skydiving which culminates with him landing on a circus tent), he even gets a girlfriend named Dolly (Blanche Ravalec) who turns him around and he becomes Bonds ally in the end. He doesn't come across as the least bit menacing. Thankfully he never appeared again in the series after this film.

Michael Lonsdale makes for a pretty good villain as Hugo Drax, bringing a wonderfully understated menace to

Moonraker is the most rediculous James Bond film... and thank god they didn't go the same direction with the next film, 2/5.

The Anonymous Critic.