Review of Moon (2009) by James S — 21 Jan 2013

...and the moral of the story is, just because you're David Bowie's son, doesn't mean you're going to be good at making films.

Duncan Jones' directorial debut is a nice idea but sometimes nice doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be all that interesting, even if you have got Sam Rockwell in the lead. Moon tells the tale of an astronaut coming to the end of a three year babysitting stint of some mining equipment on the moon before he has an accident and is seemingly replaced by himself. His only companionship up until this point has been Gerty, a sort of robot butler with the voice of Kevin Spacey.

Moon delves heavily for the 2001 sci-fi route rather than the Star Wars road and as a result comes out as only marginally more interesting than the greatest of all sci-fi bores, Solaris. Sam Rockwell is a fine actor, of that there is no doubt. he was one of the few redeeming features in Iron Man 2 and he plays the perpetual puzzlement of astronaut Sam quite well.

The film is really lacking in making us care about what is happening. The sets and model style outside shots of the mining colony might look fantastic but Moon doesn't really seem to have a heart. It's the kind of film we all feel like we're supposed to like because we'll look dumb if we don't. It's a major case of Paul Thomas Anderson syndrome.

At just under an hour and a half the film still feels like it's stalling for time. Ultimately, the film doesn't do anything which hasn't been done in numerous sci-fi films and TV shows before and in a much more entertaining way, which leaves the end result feeling all a little bit pointless.