***1/2 (Three and a half stars)
There are two ways to watch movies Roland Emmerich: What catastrophe shows or as satires. The second is more interesting, although it does not always comply. In fact, his most successful film (Independence Day) self-destructs when it fulfills its purpose of destroying everything from human idiocy and alien evil.
moon fall combines a bit of Día… with another of his hits, 2012, perhaps the best thing he did because the satirical part works well. Here it happens that the Moon falls against the Earth, but in reality the Moon is something else, and those who are right are the conspiracy theoristswhile the heroes are two astronauts that NASA takes away from credibility.
Then there is a show of destruction, but if the film is seen with a more distanced look, Moonfall is much more effective -and it says the same thing, smuggled and stealthily- than don’t look upthe explicit comic pamphlet of Adam McKay (come back, McKay, we forgive you).
Emmerich is obviously amused by all of this, and manages to point out human and political flaws in a way that today’s “compromised” cinema cannot. It is true, much of the script seems lazily designed, but there is a certain tone that allows us to guess the intention of the lack of control. It’s simple: if an Emmerich film is amusing (it doesn’t happen, for example, with Midway) it’s because it isn’t taken entirely seriously.
