When the moon has been discovered to have tilted off orbit and begins to spiral closer to Earth, all of humanity is in danger with mere weeks left before impact.  The military, led by Doug Davidson (Eme Ikwuakor) has plans to nuke the moon if NASA Deputy Director – and Davidson’s ex-wife – Jo Fowler (Halle Berry), disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), and galactic conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley) are unable to return the moon to its natural orbit.  Time is of the essence as this ragtag team leaves behind their loved ones during what could be potentially the last days of Earth in an effort to secure the future of humankind. 

Roland Emmerich’s latest doomsday feature, Moonfall, for Lionsgate, is a big-budget, bloated spectacle that signals a return of the equally disastrous pre-awards, theatrical dumping ground for the studios.  At 130 minutes, Moonfall wears out its welcome as it continually adds layer upon layer to the absurd story when it would have been much better served with a more streamlined and focused plot and a thinner cast.  This is made even more apparent given the rigidness of performances across the board.  

Both main and secondary cast alike constantly deliver uninterested and disembodied line readings from the absolutely absurd script co-written by Emmerich with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen.  These are not fresh-faced actors, either, boasting names such as Charlie Plummer, Michal Peña, and Donald Sutherland, but their line readings and the sound editing insofar as the dialogue is concerned are more on par with a student film than a multi-million-dollar studio production.  The outlandishness of the words on that page is surely a factor here made worse by the nonsensical motivations.  The overall concept of protecting the family and protecting oneself is easily enough understood, but like a schlocky horror movie these characters continually make a series of plain terrible decisions, and the actors struggle to find their through lines in the plot besides just basic survival. 

They are not aided by the handling of time in the film.  In order to ratchet up the tension, the timeframe for impact is actually much sooner than the initial calculations which is fine, but it is the handling of time during the set pieces that it falls apart.  Waves are crashing, gravity is shifting, and space rock is falling all around yet the protagonists in question are able to stop dead in their tracks to take in the green screened wonder before panic sets in and they can escape at the last final moment time and time again.  It’s a disaster movie so to skip the gratuitous destruction would be sacrilege, but there was very little thought put into how these pauses negatively affect the pacing of the sequence and the film.  Further, while the destruction is engaging in the beginning, it does not evolve much besides some changes in the color palette so that during the climax on earth, we really are not seeing anything new. 

Moonfall goes to some really bizarre places with its plot and over complicates itself for what, at its core, could and should be a simple and straightforward threat. The expansion on this idea is admirable, but it is not at all well thought out enough to really be effective and the exposition dump late in the film is so slapdash in its execution that it is hard to keep track of everything Emmerich and his writing team is trying to pull into focus. To go into Moonfall with the expectation to shut off your brain for a few hours and escape reality is understood, but even with expectations lowered so drastically, the film continually feels more like a chore as the minutes tick slowly by and the plot continues to become more and more convoluted with each scene.