Moonraker (1979)

Consistently ranked among the worst of the James Bond films, Moonraker is that rare movie on which I gave up the first time.  A few years ago, after about forty minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore, but after revisiting the film for this review series, I can safely report that I made the wrong move – but only by about twenty minutes.  There’s actually about an hour’s worth of good material in Moonraker before the film descends into a weird self-parodying science-fiction cartoon, a totally bland mess of a movie.

After a space shuttle mysteriously disappears, James Bond (Roger Moore) investigates Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the creator of said shuttle. Bond quickly forms an alliance with the beautiful astronaut Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) while uncovering Drax’s plan to foster a new master race in outer space – aided by Bond’s returning nemesis Jaws (Richard Kiel).

If the plot sounds exactly like The Spy Who Loved Me by way of Star Wars, don’t adjust your sets; what you’re detecting is a bizarre self-plagiarism that shoots for the moon, misses, and lands not among the stars but in a place devoid of the thrills and sincerity that made Spy a success.  The self-evident lack of creativity damages the film by drawing attention to its faults; what Spy did well, Moonraker bungles, and what Spy bungled, Moonraker outright fails.  Where Stromberg was a little droll yet maniacal, Drax is literally boring, mumbling his lines, shuffling his feet, and never really making eye contact with anyone.  As Drax’s opposite number, Moore is trying – he really is – but Moore’s level of tongue-in-cheek only casts too much light on the inherently absurd film before us.

The film’s greatest sins could encompass a post all their own, though among them are an apparent misunderstanding of the physics of deep space, the whiplash-inducing tonal shift into science fiction once the NASA cavalry arrive with laser guns, and the film’s unforgivable mistreatment of Jaws.  Arguably the major find of the franchise, Jaws was a colossal contributing factor to Spy’s success; the scowl, the physicality, and those teeth all combined into an unforgettable character, which Kiel deftly brought to life.  But the promise contained in Jaws’s pre-credits appearance – really a great opener, in which Bond, Jaws, and another airman battle over two parachutes in free fall – tragically flops when the film demotes Jaws first to a Wile E. Coyote caricature, hapless yet indestructible, before shoehorning him into both an uninspiring romantic subplot and (spoiler warning?) an utterly unconvincing redemption plot.

It’s really a shame, because there’s a skeleton of a great Bond movie in there somewhere, and if we hadn’t just seen the exact same plot in Spy Who Loved Me it’d be a winner; it keeps the sleuthing intact, and the idea that Holly Goodhead is secretly a CIA agent is a clever twist that Chiles pulls off well.  Indeed, it’s almost disappointing that Bond successfully beds her, since her apparent resistance of Bond’s charms is such a compelling angle – a step, perhaps, toward the franchise’s later moves away from the “Bond girl” trope (best embodied, literally, by Britt Ekland’s bikini in The Man with the Golden Gun).

Is Moonraker the worst Bond ever?  I’m not ready to go quite that far – it is, unmistakably, a movie that is difficult to enjoy, at best tepid and uninspiring and at worst viciously schlocky and pretty much bad.  It’s in strong competition with Diamonds Are Forever for my least favorite Bond thus far, and it’s the first entry for which I’ve really agreed with the popular consensus that finds Moore’s Bond guilty of crimes against moviegoers.  And for once, in spite of my usually optimistic outlook, I’m rather uneasy about the future of the franchise; where Diamonds Are Forever might have been shrugged off as Connery’s unenthusiastic last hurrah, we still have three more outings with Roger Moore.

Moonraker is rated PG.  The violence is really quite cartoony, replete with laser guns in the film’s final battle; Bond beds three women, but there’s nothing shown below the shoulders.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of For Your Eyes Only (1981) on December 7, 2013!