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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
More Like Carry on Mooning!, 26 Dec 2008
"Other films promise you the moon. Moonraker delivers" boasted the eleventh James Bond film that finally took 007 into the one territory he had not previously conquered - outer space. Oh, he nearly got there in You Only Live Twice, if Blofeld had not pulled him out of the SPECTRE rocket, but then Twice was made in the era when the Bonds always kept at least one foot in reality no matter have far fetched the plots became. However perverse parody became the hallmark of the Roger Moore canon, more like Our Man Flint than Ian Fleming. With the success of Star Wars making sci-fi a fashionable cinematic genre again, and the outward bound sounding title Moonraker at his disposal, Cubby Broccoli decreed it was time to boldly assign 007 to where no Bond had been before. The resulting film has been the source of contention among Bond fans ever since, as this is the least best of the bunch.
The film's plot Bond on the trail of a missing Moonraker space shuttle, hijacked on its way to England for a software fitment. Investigation commences with the manufacturer of the shuttle, billionaire Sir Hugo Drax, who Bond begins to suspect as being in on the hijack when Drax's henchmen made several attempts to kill him - well that would make you suspicious wouldn't it.
Bond follows Drax to Venice, where our undercover secret agent maintains discretion by driving a hover-gondola across St Mark's Square, much to the amusement of the pigeons. Joining forces with CIA agent Holly Goodhead, the pair jet off to Rio where steel toothed lug Jaws has decided to come pop along and join in the fun.
The villains grab Goodhead and Bond tracks down Drax's Amazon lair, complete with six Moonraker shuttles ready for launch. Bond and Holly are reunited in incarceration, but escape being toasted underneath one of the shuttles only to stowaway on another. Once on board Drax's space station, the dastardly plan to destroy all human life on Earth and replace it with a master race is revealed. Bond alerts the authorities and the station is attacked, Jaws switching sides when he sees which way the tide is turning. Drax takes a one way trip to oblivion, while Bond and Goodhead become the first couple to make love in zero gravity; unless there is something NASA is keeping quiet about.
Unsurprisingly the film bears no relation to the Fleming novel, using only the title, the character name of Hugo Drax and a single scene where Bond and his girl are imprisoned underneath the rocket, Drax intending to celebrate its launch with a human barbecue. The book had Hugo Drax as the sponsor of a revolutionary Moonraker missile, which he intends to test by firing it into the North Sea. But Bond and Special Branch officer Gala Brand discover Drax is really nazi war criminal Graf Hugo von der Drache and not from Liverpool after all. He installs a nuclear warhead in the Moonraker with the intention of firing it on London to avenge the defeat of the Third Reich. As Drax makes his escape in a submarine, Bond alters the missile's course and blows Drax's sub out of the water, an idea used in the film of The Spy Who Loved Me.
Cubby Broccoli dismissed the novel as dated, saying "We have one piddling little rocket threatening London. We want a threat to the whole world." Throwing out the book's plot, Broccoli had his team come up with an original screenplay. After a lot of hard thinking they came up with a blatant remake of The Spy Who Loved Me, shifting the central setting from underwater to outer space. A bit unfortunate considering that Spy itself is a remake of You Only Live Twice, substituting the sea for outer space. The absurdities of the aforementioned Connery film were successfully glossed over by playing the whole thing with a straight face. Moonraker could have worked with the same approach but is undermined by an overdose of Carry On humour and the persistence of Jaws, a cartoonish character who had become tedious about halfway through his previous film. With a redundancy of character potential, Jaws simply botches one assassination attempt after another, with unfortunate rebounding consequences on his person. The resemblance to Wile. E . Coyote - even down to the "Doh. What went wrong" expressions on his face - is so strong that one can only assume his professional equipment is supplied by Acme.
Roger Moore is, well, Roger Moore. While fun and entertaining when the action is rolling, he always seemed to lack conviction when called on to play the serious stuff. Moore's moments of human drama in Spy, where Bond reacts to Anya mentioning his wife and when Anya discovers Bond had killed her boyfriend, were particularly weakened by the actor's apparent discomfort, delivering his lines as if he was reciting a shopping list. However Moore does come across better in Moonraker than usual. When he emerges from near death in the centrifuge, there is none of the usual Moore-isms; he is shaken, probably stirred and suffering to the point of speechlessness; a definite first for Jolly Roger.
The evocatively named Gala Brand was re-christened the more provocative Holly Goodhead and the dishy Lois Chiles made a satisfactory job of her, despite not once appearing in the skimpy costume worn on the film poster. Michael Lonsdale is disappointing as Hugo Drax, playing the part with a one dimensional monotone that worked for Joseph Wiseman's Dr No and Donald Pleasance's Blofeld, but had become somewhat cliched and tiresome since. The scarred, deformed Nazi of Fleming's novel would have been better served by Jeremy Kemp or James Mason (who was considered for the part) , while retaining his SS background would have given the film Drax more depth to his motivations. However, Lonsdale's characterisation does lend a certain droll to much of his dialogue, particularly when he orders his servant Chang "Look after Mr. Bond. See some harm comes to him."
Derek Meddings executes the special effects with his usual finesse, the climatic space battle being particularly spectacular though the sound of lazers and explosions puts paid to Broccoli's promise that Moonraker would not be science fiction but science fact. Like George Lucas, Moonraker uses the laws of physics when it suits and discards them when it doesn't, but this is a minor quibble. The real sore point about the film's climax is Jaw's rather unconvincing conversion into a good guy and his infatuation for a diminutive Daisy May character complete with blond pigtails and steel rimmed bins; a real forunner for Spice Girl Emma Bunton if there ever was one.
The infuriating thing about Moonraker is that it could have worked if the it had been structured to be as straight and realistic as possible, in order to support the more fantastical elements of the screenplay. Instead, it is undermined by pointless chases and idiotic jokes, including a ludicrous power gondolier chase through the canals of Venice, which replaced what could have been a more inventive motorcycle pursuit through the same location. Screenwriter Christopher Wood later distanced himself from these aspects of Moonraker, claiming that the visual jokes were later added by the production team. His rather serious novelisation of the script that accompanied the film's release is probably more indicative of what he had envisaged.
Moonraker may not have been a hit with the fans but it was with the public, turning out the highest grossing Bond of its time (though inflation adjusted figures still put Thunderball at the top). With the fashionable motif of space adventure and residual expectations from the success of Spy, it would have been more surprising if Moonraker had flopped. Despite this success, Moonraker proved to be the last of its kind. Broccoli realised that the franchise had gone too far in the cartoon direction and resolved to bring Bond down to earth with a kiss-kiss-bang-bang.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
You Only Live Thrice, 3 Nov 2008
Roger Moore's biggest box-office hit during his tenure as Bond, Moonraker has seen its reputation plummet to the point where its widely regarded as the worst film in the entire series. It's not exactly difficult to see why. The ill-advised jokes that end the otherwise stunningly shot pretitle sequence of Jaws and a parachuteless Bond battling midair unfortunately give a hint of what is to come, but for the first 35 minutes it chugs along very competently, even throwing in one good setpiece in a G-Force simulator. Then comes the gondola/hovercraft sequence, a setpiece that abandons any notion of internal logic for cheap gags and illustrates one of the film's biggest problems: there's no real menace when we know Bond doesn't need to rely on his wits because he's got an absurd gadget for every occasion, and without any sense of threat the action scenes constantly fall flat. Many of them aren't even particularly well-staged but look rather haphazardly thrown together. Worse still, by offering the second consecutive reworking of You Only Live Twice's plot (all from the same director, Lewis Gilbert) it all feels like it's just going through the motions because they can't think of anything better to do.
While it doesn't show the contempt for Bond that Octopussy seemed to revel in as it seemed to go out of its way to humiliate Bond by making him literally butt of all the jokes, it constantly winks at the audience as if to say "We know it's nonsense, but at least it's very expensive nonsense." Unfortunately, it does set up two of the least welcome future developments in the series - as well as being the one where the product placement started to get out of control (my, didn't 7-Up and British Airways do well?), it also started the unfortunate tradition of the Michael G. Wilson cameo. Still, it's nice to see Bernard Lee getting to play a warmer M in his final Bond, finally proud of the boy (the film is very much the end of an era, with most of the surviving members of the old team breaking up - this was Lee, Gilbert and Ken Adam's last film), the great special effects are genuinely impressive even 28 years on and Michel Lonsdale provides the series with one of its best villains and gets all the best lines ("Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him") even if he is wasted by the derivative plot.
There's not a huge amount in the way of new extras on this repackaged two-disc Ultimate Edition over the original one-disc issue several years ago - Roger Moore's audio commentary, a 1979 making of featurette, footage of the Rio shoot, test footage for the skydiving sequence and a couple of storyboard sequences. Sadly the teaser trailer sending up hairspray and perfume ads is still not included, although all the extras from the original edition have been carried over.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not as bad as people say!, 2 Jan 2009
For some reason this film is seen as a complete joke, something which it isn't. Alright I must admit the ending with Jaws and his lady friend is like a under budget comedy, the rest of the film is quite good!
If it's entertainment your after, Moonraker will certainly satisfy.
And there are plenty of extras too including a new commentary with Roger Moore and many featurettes from the time.
So you might as well give it another chance. Show you kids what Bond was like! I must admit, I'm debating whether Moonraker is better than the Quantum of Solace or not!
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