Directing: F
Acting: D
Writing: F
Cinematography: D+
Editing: C-
Special Effects: D+

Academy Award Winner Halle Berry. Patrick Wilson. Michael Peña. Honorary Academy Award Winner Donald Sutherland. John “Samwell Tarly” Bradley. Charlie Plummer. Hell, even Kelly Reilly or Kathleen Fee, or literally anyone else in the cast: what in god’s name did they do to deserve Moonfall? Has every single one of these actors truly hit rock bottom? Were they having a party together while reading the script the first time, got collectively wasted, and said “Yes, let’s do this!” Is this a sinister government plot of some kind? Are they victims of mind control?

So many questions! Someone should do an investigative docuseries about the making of this movie. Because I want answers.

Moonfall is unbearably bad, even by Roland Emmerich’s steadily plummeting standards. This is the director who has made “dumb, fun disaster movie” his brand. He’s fully into the era now where the “fun” part is gone entirely. I always loved his 1996 breakout Independence Day, largely because it blended then-state-of-the-art special effects with subtly winking, self-aware humor. It was a movie that didn’t take itself seriously. Although his 1998 follow-up, Godzilla, was a genuine dud, the same still could be said of other far lesser, but still fun works like The Day After Tomorrow (2004), or yes, even 2012 (2009)—which I gave a solid B! But, I could be generous in rating those films because of a level of entertainment value transcending the utter ridiculousness.

Not so with Moonfall, which is so awful, I saw it at an advance screening, in an auditorium full of people who had gone to see it for free, and I still think we should all pool our resources and sue for damages. The solitary silver lining to the experience is how much more fun it is to write about how terrible it is. This movie opens in theaters officially tomorrow, which means first screenings are actually tonight at 6:00, but remember: this is February. February release dates, especially for blockbusters, are always a bad sign. There is no month suitable for this movie’s release. It should have been thrown in the garbage. This movie is top to bottom, utter trash.

And it has talented actors in it! You sure as shit wouldn’t know it by watching this movie. Very early on, Halle Berry’s delivery of a line like “We just lied to the American people!” sets the stage for a genuinely painful experience. Patrick Wilson is slightly better while still clearly phoning it in. Donald Sutherland slums it in a bit part. How much did these people get paid, anyway? Was it worth it? The only performance that is even halfway close to fun is that of John Bradley, who gets saddled with a backward take on the “crackpot character,” where his theories about the moon being a “megastructure” (a word you will wish you never hear again for the rest of your life) built by prehistoric super-advanced alien technology turns out to be right.

Okay, let’s back up for a moment. I’m finally getting into the premise here, which is so idiotic, I think I’m genuinely dumber now just by sitting through it. This movie could have been improved immeasurably just by doing away with that “megastructure” bullshit, and making it just about the moon somehow getting thrown off orbit and causing havoc on the planet and its tides and such. Instead, much like 2012, itself a brainless movie that still looks like a Kubrickian masterpiece by comparison, Emerrich takes a “kitchen sink” approach to the proceedings, where seemingly anything that could happen does happen.

Except, of course, nothing whatsoever here is tethered to reality. And I do mean nothing. The way this movie is wildly derivative of far greater movies that came before it and then gleans over their compelling concepts like a pretentious middle school writer who doesn’t realize they don’t know what they’re talking about—all that is, frankly, low-hanging fruit. I’m even more annoyed by the more subtle misses, which are even more boneheaded when you pay attention to them. Not a single line of dialogue, for example, rings true for any scene or scenario in which it is uttered. In one scene, a group of guys carjack a group of our principal characters, including Sonny (Charlie Plummer), who plays the 18-year-old son of Patrick Wilson’s unfairly disgraced astronaut Brian Harper. One of the carjackers roughs Sonny up a bit, and actually says, “You a college boy? Huh?” Remember, this is literally in the middle of pieces of the moon breaking off and falling to the earth as huge meteors. In what universe would someone say that? Was this written by rightwing nut jobs who think colleges are the enemy? Sonny is revealed to be a bit of a criminal delinquent early on, not even any mention of his going to college. Mind you, this is just one example among many similarly baffling lines.

I have to mention the special effects, because they are ultimately just as lazy as every other aspect of this movie. In a sequence that truly should be a visual thrill, the moon, now much closer to Earth, has caused a tidal wave crashing into an urban neighborhood of the West Coast, presumably Los Angeles. Water crashes through streets and around Palm Trees, pushes cars and tumbles yachts, crashes against the first floor or two of buildings. In this wide shot, we see countless blocks of this—and none of the vehicles are moving before the sea wave arrives. We literally see no people at all, as if this city has been evacuated completely. Cut to Brian Harper showing up at a conspiracy-theorists mini seminar about “megastructures” (oh, for fuck’s sake) held by Joh Bradley’s KC Houseman character, at a hotel in that very neighborhood.

A fair amount of the imagery in outer space is rendered well, in terms of the effects. That’s as complimentary as I can get. When our heroes barely make it off the surface of the Earth ahead of a “gravity wave” and find their way into the center of the moon (which, remember, is actually a giant alien machine), Moonfall goes further downhill fast, on a curve so steep you didn’t even realize was still possible.

Roland Emmerich, who co-wrote this garbage with a team of two other writers, is now 66 years old. Granted, that’s not that old, but the filmography is the evidence: someone should check this man for early stages of dementia. How can he not understand what a black hole of idiocy and wasted time this movie is? Even worse, it’s completely witless. The one time it got a laugh out of me when actually trying to do so was with the use of the phrase “free bagels.”

On the other hand, assigning a medical or mental condition to the people who made this movie is too close to excusing it. Roland Emmerich and his writers should be brought up on assault charges. These people need to be held accountable. This movie is so bad it’s genuinely, deeply offensive. I mean, every blockbuster is a stunning waste of resources, arguably, but at least with a lot of them you can find some level of merit, either artistically or in terms of sheer entertainment value (and on rare occasions, both). But all I can think about is how much money was spent on this movie (reportedly $140 million!), just for it to fail on absolutely every level. This film is an epic waste of resources. If it has any use at all, it’ll be in the hands of terrorists, or maybe highly specialized masochists. I left the theater feeling like I’d just had a lobotomy.

*There could be a scene with someone literally fucking the moon and this movie wouldn’t be any worse.*

Overall: F