Friday, October 13, 2017

Classic Movie Review: Moonraker (1979)

Moonraker (1979)
Directed by: Lewis Gilbert.
Written: Christopher Wood.
Starring: Roger Moore (James Bond), Lois Chiles (Holly Goodhead), Michael Lonsdale (Hugo Drax), Richard Kiel (Jaws), Corinne Cléry (Corinne Dufour), Bernard Lee (M), Geoffrey Keen (Sir Frederick Gray), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny).
 
Moonraker was the 11th James Bond released, and the fourth time Roger Moore had the role – and I think by this point, everyone knew what to expect. The formula for a Bond movie includes a megalomaniacal billionaire villain with some crazy scheme for world domination (check), his lead henchman, who will be as memorable as the villain (check), a doomed “bad girl” who Bond will be drawn so she can be killed (check) a ridiculously named good girl for Bond to actually fall for (check), gadgets, action, quips, etc. (check, check, check). It was clear by this point that Moore was no Sean Connery, but he’d do, I guess – but they were also out of Bond novels, so they had to start coming up with story ideas – most of which got sillier and sillier. For Moonraker, that meant Bond had to go to space – almost definitely because Star Wars was a hit, which is why, we do see some laser gun battles in the finale. Moonraker is hardly an embarrassment for the franchise – it isn’t as bad as some people think, mainly because it leans into its camp value harder than most Bond films do. But it isn’t particularly good either. Like many (dare I say most?) Bond films, it’s an effective time waster and placeholder – marking time before the next great Bond movie arrives.
 
The movie opens with perhaps its best action sequence – with Bond on a plane that the pilot has sabotaged, so it’s going to crash and soon. Bond finds himself flying through the air without a parachute – and engages in not just one, but two midair fights in an attempt to get one (spoiler alert, he gets one). The main thrust of the plot involves Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) – a hugely wealthy man whose company has designed the Moonraker rocket – and has seen that get stolen. Of course, at first he seems like the victim, but he’s really the bad guy – with a particularly silly plan for global domination even by Bond villain standards. One of his henchmen is Jaws (Richard Kiel) – making his second appearance in a row in a Bond film – proving, he really isn’t that bad a guy. Bond has to team up with Lois Chiles’ Holly Goodhead (seriously, guys, were they even trying to come up with clever sexual puns for the women at this point) – a scientist working for Drax, but not really. I do appreciate that they were trying to make her more than a bimbo – she really is a smart, capable woman, and not just a damsel in distress, but it’s hard to take that nod to feminism seriously with that name, right?
 
Moonraker dutifully checks off all the boxes for what audiences expected in a Bond film. The film was directed by Lewis Gilbert – making his third, and final Bond film – and he knows what he’s doing. But everything about the film feels just like that – that everyone involved is checking off boxes. The song isn’t particularly memorable – even if they brought Shirley Bassey for the third time, but no one is going to confuse the song for Goldfinger. The film has more than a little bit of a warmed over feel to it.
 
And yet, it’s hard to deny that the film can be fun. Yes, at over two hours, it’s too long, but when you take the film in the goofy spirit in which it was created, it can be amusing – right up the infamous re-entry that ends the film. The film is a goof – and is largely forgettable. It’s also a reminder that James Bond is the longest film series in the world not necessarily because it’s always been great, but because they just keep churning them out.

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