Review of Moonraker (1979) by Drew O — 11 Aug 2011

Moonraker is nothing but a bad, bad film. It's ridiculous, and extremely stupid. And that's not because of the space scenes, those are actually the best part of the movie, it's because of everything else.

With the fact that Bond is going into space, and you're fully aware of that, you're interested to find out how they're handled. They are handled quite well and are exciting to watch, but the problem is that it takes forever to get to that point. There is far too much globe-trotting going on in this film to handle. Bond begins in good old M's England office, goes to Drax's mansion, makes his way to Venice where he engages in a gondola chase (sigh) and an actually decent fight scene with Drax's henchemen, then goes to Rio where he battles Jaws a couple times and Jaws gets a girlfriend (another sigh), then to the Amazon where he finally meets up with Drax again in a temple, and lastly to outer space (sigh #3). With all that to take in, the film drags on for what feels like an eternity and has little action to keep you awake. How a gondola chase ended up in the same movie as laser battles in space will always puzzle me.

The space scenes are entertaining and fun, but all the bull you have to sit through to get to that point ruins the film. The only thing the space scenes can save this from is being worse than The Man with the Golden Gun.