Moonraker

Lewis Gilbert – 1979 – England

It’s not the worst of the 70s era Bonds, but unfortunately that’s not saying much. This was the decade of stinkers like Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Live and Let Die (1973), after all. Only The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) really shines as a superior Bond outing from this period, and Moonraker was a blatant attempt to recapture the same lightning – with the same director and a similar plot – while also tapping into the science fiction craze kicked off by Star Wars. Sadly, it’s yet another painful, awkward and weak episode with only a few pleasures, such as the always great work of Bond veterans Ken Adam (production design) and composer John Barry. Adam’s and Barry’s work is so spectacular, in fact, that you end up pining for it to be in service of a much better movie. (Adam did The Spy Who Loved Me too, and Barry’s lack of involvement in that film is pretty much the only thing keeping it from perfection.) Symbolizing the pathetic nature of the affair is poor Richard Kiel, who returns as ‘Jaws’ from the previous film, except now inexplicably neutered and made a comic/sympathetic character instead of the figure of menace that made him popular in the first place. The hokey, fourth-wall breaking musical jokes, always a cause of wincing in the 70s/80s Bond movies, is at its apex here. If someone rides a horse, cue the Magnificent Seven theme. Someone needs to press five buttons on a futuristic keypad; cue the Close Encounters of the Third Kind music. Love at first sight; cue Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet Overture. And yes, this is indeed the one with the pigeon doing an editor-made double-take at the sight of one of Bond’s outlandish vehicles. The best things in the whole movie are the pre-credit skydiving sequence, (even if zero effort was made to disguise the stuntmen’s faces and parachute packs), and the fabulously impractical villain’s lair, which is conical, with huge, triangular monitor screens lining its walls. As a lifelong Bond fan, I can enjoy Moonraker on a superficial level without letting its avalanche of weaknesses bother me, as I do with other critically despised entries like Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985), but no one should check this one out if they’re new and curious what James Bond is all about.