Moonfall review: Roland Emmerich loves a global catastrophe, but forgets to be funny

We're not savages: There's a place in our hearts for Roland Emmerich, the glib, apocalyptically-minded filmmaker (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) who exists solely to make Michael Bay appear restrained and thoughtful. But with Moonfall, his typically elephantine yet stillborn latest, the director does himself no favors. First, it should be a lot campier and louder: The moon is falling out of orbit and headed straight toward us. The seas churn upward and rocks take out city skylines. But when Michael Peña represents your film's most impassioned presence, there's a problem.

In an alternate version of the film, Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson — playing, respectively, a heroic NASA exec and a disgraced flyboy astronaut — would be throwing off crazy sparks and relishing the opportunity to save the planet. In Moonfall, they're going through the motions, barely paying attention. You can almost see the prospect of a trailer nap dancing behind their eyes. Apart from Donald Sutherland's conspiracy-minded cameo, Emmerich brings on John Bradley, best known as Game of Thrones' Samwell, for some British-accented nerd support. But as the movie's truther-hero (i.e., the Randy Quaid role), his part doesn't hit quite as it should, especially given what today's actual truther-heroes do.

You're going for the CGI destruction anyway, and even on those rubbly grounds, Moonfall is a disappointment, flitting by its destroyed vistas with a weird impatience. When a Space Shuttle launches off just as a tidal wave takes out the Eastern Seaboard ("You have to be ready to go in exactly 28 minutes!" says a technician), the silliness that should have been a guiding principle briefly takes hold. Mostly, though, as TV newscasters inform us, civilization has taken a serious nosedive — definitely the case when a well-financed Emmerich disaster flick can't even get its dumb-fun groove on. Grade: D+

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