More precisely, the moon is the celestial body flying mysteriously off its orbit. Something or somebody<\/em> has propelled Earth\u2019s natural satellite on a trajectory to slam into our fragile blue planet, wreaking tidal and seismic havoc, and spinning off mountain-sized chunks of moon rock as the lunar mass careens ever closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christopher Cross should get a kick seeing a film dramatize his memorable love song lyric so literally, in CGI scenes of New York City torn asunder, the Chrysler Building\u2019s iconic spire whizzing across the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n L.A. gets hit, too, in the\u00a0Independence Day<\/em>\u00a0filmmaker\u2019s inauspicious return to big-budget disaster territory, but no one in the film seems to care about the massive tsunami that washes over Hollywood. That could be scathing social commentary or just lazy writing since these characters tend not to mourn any loss of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Halle Berry\u2019s plucky Jocinda Fowler, the acting director of NASA, and Patrick Wilson\u2019s maverick astronaut Brian Harper are too busy banging their heads together coming up with outlandish missions to stop the moon from falling out of the sky and into the Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They even commandeer the decommissioned Space Shuttle Endeavour for a hail-mary mission to outer space. That they\u2019re able to get the old museum piece from L.A. to a launchpad in Colorado, gassed and ready to launch in a mere matter of hours is the sort of yeah-whatever-let\u2019s-just-go-with-it development that\u2019s par for the course in the half-baked script by Emmerich, Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen. Although nothing could be as half-baked as the jumble of pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, and sci-fi mumbo-jumbo that constitute the ultimate extraterrestrial explanation for the moon\u2019s calamitous fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, the visual effects, often the hallmark of Emmerich\u2019s movies, look half-baked much of the time. Despite the occasional striking tableau of, say, a blood-orange moon looming like a colossus on the horizon, the visual elements don\u2019t inspire many wonders at the enormous scale of the events being depicted. In one scene, amateur astronomer KC Houseman (John Bradley, better known as\u00a0Game of Thrones<\/em> Samwell Tarly) gazes in awe at a sight we barely glimpse for a second before he soliloquizes about it at length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the millions and millions of gray-ish pixels forming towering waves, toppling buildings, and swirling space debris rarely gather any real sense of weight or tangibility. Likewise, the movie lends little gravity or dimension to the human toll taken by the catastrophic onslaught of floods, fires, and earthquakes. Maybe that\u2019s the real commentary, intended or not: the human element is missing from blockbuster cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly the characters and their respective portfolios of dramatic backstory feel mishandled. Berry and Wilson both have done far better work elsewhere, with Wilson particularly unconvincing as \u201cthe only one\u201d who can lead this mission\/land this shuttle\/look into the heart of darkness and make it out alive, or whatever else he\u2019s literally the only person on the planet capable of doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As conspiracy-touting NASA wannabe Houseman, the first to spot impending disaster, Bradley limns the most persuasive performance of the three leads. The mama\u2019s boy, besides helpfully spouting sci-fi exposition, is clearly intended as comic relief, yet the only really funny thing he adds to the proceedings is a cat named Fuzz Aldrin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The remainder of the characters generally fall into one-note categories of \u201cgeneral who must be ignored,\u201d \u201ca government official who must be defied,\u201d or \u201cloved one who must be saved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately for Jocinda\u2019s ex, Doug (Eme Ikwuakor), a four-star general with his finger on the trigger of potentially world-saving nukes, not everyone makes the must-be-saved list. With disaster bearing down, their little boy Jimmy (Zayn Maloney) laments to mom, \u201cWe\u2019ll never make it to Dad.\u201d She just smiles serenely and says, \u201cThat\u2019s okay.\u201d There\u2019s your comic relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or the scene where Donald Sutherland, as enigmatic government archivist Holdenfield, keeper of the nation\u2019s darkest state secrets, discovers someone snooping through his top-secret files, insists they don\u2019t have clearance, then, seeing a flash of a security badge, proceeds to blab all the secrets he\u2019s been holding for the last half a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holdenfield also doesn\u2019t seem the slightest bit bothered by the coming apocalypse \u2014 almost like he\u2019s seen that movie before, and figures that somebody will think of something before it all comes to an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moonfall\u00a0is Rated PG-13 and is now playing in theaters nationwide. Visit\u00a0<\/em>www.fandango.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Moonfall:](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.metroweekly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MOONFALL-moon-vfx-00035-end.jpg?resize=960%2C640&ssl=1\")