1979 - Moonraker
Alternate Title - Let's Cash In On The Star Wars Craze!
PG - 126 minutes
Director - Lewis Gilbert
Stars - Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale
The movie opens on two planes making sweet, gentle love mid-air. Doggy-style of course. One of these planes is called Moonraker. The other plane can fuck off because we only have room for one titular aircraft in this movie. A couple of mods steal Moonraker and the other plane blows up. Cut to an overused scene of M on the red phone with his superiors.
The next scene is a skydiving sequence that involves Jaws and Bond fighting over parachutes which is actually pretty cool if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s well done is what I’m getting at. Personally I don’t feel the need to parachute, what with Red Bull giving me wings and all (pay up). Jaws’ parachute doesn’t open and instead he lands on a circus tent which you clearly hear rip when he hits it so basically he should be fucking dead on top of a now dead elephant. Cue the Moonraker song which is the most anyone has gone out of their way to include the name of the movie in a theme song.
Bond meets Hugo Drax and his suspicious goatee. Bond should always be aware that every villain has a mansion and a passion for interior decoration. Also, anyone that surrounds themselves with someone with a name that is a pun is probably a villain. In this movie it’s Dr. Goodhead.
This movie answers the question of how could anyone make Roger Moore look even more elderly in his Bond role by putting him in a centrifuge trainer. It’s basically a NASA level carnival ride which simulates the gravity force when shot into space. In this movie though it simulates what it would look like if Roger Moore drank from the wrong cup in The Last Crusade because he starts to fall apart like a damn wax figure in the sun. Needless to say, Bond gets stuck in it because a henchmen has taken control. When Bond finally gets out he just sort of makes eye contact with the henchman and they both go on with their day like nothing fucking happened. This movie has more nonchalant attempted murder than I thought was possible.
A few scenes later Drax is hunting birds and Bond joins in on the murderous fun. Drax asks Bond to take a shot at a bird and Bond fires. Drax says, “You missed, Bond.” Bond responds with, “Did I?” as a sniper working for Drax falls out of a tree. Bond knows Drax was about to blow his fucking head off and all they do is look at each other, Bond gets back in the car and drives off. Nothing is said about how he tried to kill him or how Bond killed a man. It’s all ignored into the next scene. After this, Drax fires a girl that helped Bond and she runs into the woods while dogs chase her in slow motion. This is part 2 of the epic “girl being torn apart by animals to classical music” scenes.
Later, Bond is in a glass making factory, apparently. He appears to not know how glass works because he spies on a group of people while hiding behind a giant clear vase. You can see him the entire fucking time. In fact, the shape of the glass enlarges his face to a comical level.
This movie has one of the stupidest scenes in cinema history. Bond is involved in a boat chase in Venice when suddenly he decides to turn his boat into a hovercraft and crawls onto the land. Just like The Spy Who Loved Me, the same man on the beach does a double take at his bottle of wine. Then, the impossible happens. An image that made me question my sanity and if life is worth living. Right after the alcoholic man does a double take while watching a hovering boat, a pigeon literally does a triple take at the boat. As if the pigeon was so surprised, it didn’t believe his bird eyes the first two takes. I’ve never seen a triple take before. I’ve never seen a non-cartoon pigeon react to anything in a movie before. I wasn’t aware that a bird would even know the fucking difference between a car or a hover-crafting boat. No angle of this shot makes any sense. I could write the rest of this review on this moment alone but to keep my sanity I must move on.
Later, Bond kills two elderly scientists on accident and then is attacked by the same bowl-cutted henchman that tried to kill him earlier. This time he is dressed in Asian combat attire and attacking with what is basically a fucking piece of wood. Bond kills him via piano. Yes, piano.
We also find out that Jaws makes a pretty good back-alley rapist. A girl helping Bond is alone in an alley while a carnival goes on in the background. Jaws walks up to her dressed as a giant clown and tries to bite her. When several partiers enter the alley he pretends to dance with and kiss on her a bit before Bond jumps on him to break up the romance. To be fair, most of my romantic stories involve clowns and Brazilian alleyways at night. But that’s just the way I do things. I just have a bigger heart than most.
There is so much crazy shit in this movie that it makes me want to skip some of it but the whole gondola scene is amazing. James and his woman are going down a mountain in a gondola when Jaws snaps a wire and starts a high-wire fight. It’s amazing if for no other reason than Jaws backhands the woman like a fucking pimp. Some shit happens and it leads to Jaws crashing into a building that appears to be some sort of 7-Up collection facility. That or the soda company sponsored this movie. Take your pick. Jaws meets a girl and without speaking they both walk away holding hands.
More insanity when a boat chase leads to Bond turning his boat into a hang glider and floating away. I won’t get into it though. It’s a lot to take in. This scene lands him in the jungle where he follows a beautiful woman into a building that looks like they would sacrifice virgins at the top. The building is full of beautiful women and they try to kill him blah blah blah same story every time. This building ends up being Drax’s lair and it shows that Drax is ready to head to space on a Moonraker.
Through an unlikely series of events, Bond and his vagina having pal are launched into space and meet up with Drax’s base. The plan is kill everyone on earth and repopulate with all of Drax’s beautiful people. The facial hair finally makes sense because he’s basically Space Hitler.
Let it be known that the first 1 hour and 50 minutes of this movie was pretty damn good (except the stupid goofy humor) but then this movie turns into a fucking SPACE LASER FIGHT. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t enjoying myself during the previous near 2 hours of screen time.
Quickly, lots of people die. Jaws turns good because of his love for the girl he met at the 7-Up billboard house. He helps Bond and his woman escape. Bond then space-fucks.
Overall, this is a fading light in the franchise for a while because it’s the last movie before the 1980’s, which is the worst decade in human history. Including the dark ages and the years of WW2. I know most people say this is the worst Bond ever and I can see why if you just focus on the space shit. Personally, I really liked the movie before they got into space. I could always do with less pointless humor. This movie is full of gags and non-jokes. I really liked watching this and then suddenly I couldn’t stop laughing at the point where they all broke out their space laser guns in an effort to cash in on Star Wars. But the plot was set up nicely and you know what you were watching which is more than I can say for the next movie, For Your Eyes Only.