Review: Moonraker

In this one, 007 James Bond (Roger Moore) investigates the hijacking of the title US space shuttle, which has been hijacked in the air. The culprit is actually the shuttle’s designer, industrialist Hugo Drax (Michael/Michel Lonsdale) who has devious plans for it. He has also employed the services of metal-mouthed hulking henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel), once again squaring off against Bond. Lois Chiles plays Dr. Holly Goodhead (!), a former NASA astronaut, whilst Corrine Clery is Drax employee Corrine, and Emily Bolton turns up as Manuela, 007’s contact in Brazil. Blanche Ravalec plays a character named Dolly, whom Jaws takes a liking to, whilst Toshiro Suga plays Drax’s other henchman Chang.

For my money there’s only two outright duds to date in the James Bond franchise, “A View to a Kill” and this tedious 1979 Lewis Gilbert (the superior “You Only Live Twice” as well as “The Spy Who Loved Me”, and the non-Bond films “Alfie” and “Educating Rita”) flick. Both films star a lethargic Roger Moore, feature mostly ineffectual Bond girls, and dreadfully disappointing villains. I think this one has a slight edge on the later film, or more to the point, it’s not quite as bad. It is however the dumbest James Bond film to date, without question.

Things begin in poor fashion with trumpets on the James Bond theme for the gun barrel sequence. The score overall by series regular John Barry (“Robin and Marian”, “Goldfinger”) is frankly a bit repetitive and trumpet-happy for my liking, and features a few genuinely irritating musical references the film could’ve done without. The sight of Roger Moore skydiving in a suit is amusing, but the entire opening sequence is a bit dopey even for a Roger Moore era Bond film. How did he not see that Jaws (a returning Richard Kiel) was on the same plane as himself? After that silliness we get one of Maurice Binder’s naughtier titles designs which I rather liked. The Hal David-penned title song however, is lucky to have the great Shirley Bassey on vocals, she’s the only thing stopping the stupid little number from being the worst James Bond song not sung by Madonna. Lois Maxwell is still here as Miss Moneypenny, but as she was starting to get a bit long in the tooth by this stage, the filmmakers thankfully spare us much of the Bond-Moneypenny flirtation. Truth be told, this isn’t a particularly good film for the Bond Girls, with the rather pretty Corinne Clery faring best as Corrine Dufour, the assistant and pilot to the main villain. You may remember her as the title character in the light S&M softcore pic “The Story of O”. Although I’m not sure she’d rank in my Top 10 Bond Girls of All-Time, it’s a shame that Clery’s Dufour gets bumped off in fairly short order because she’s pretty decent in a less than decent film. Far less effective is Lois Chiles as the main Bond girl. You thought Dr. Christmas Jones was the silliest name for a Bond girl? Introducing Dr. Holly Goodhead. Yep, Goodhead. Actually, I find the name stupidly brilliant, if not a patch on Plenty O’Toole in “Diamonds Are Forever” (my favourite Bond Girl name of all-time, partly because of Sean Connery’s retort after being introduced: ‘I’m Plenty’ ‘Well of course you are…’). Chiles is completely robotic and unpleasant in the part, sharing zero chemistry with anyone or anything in the entire film. I’d place her second only to Tany Roberts’ Stacey Sutton on the Worst Bond Girls of All-Time list. No charm, no presence, no acting ability, and not my idea of beauty either. On the latter, the most attractive woman in the film by far is Emily Bolton as Manuela, but she’s sadly not around for long and isn’t much of an actress that’s for sure.

The film shares another thing in common with the later “A View to a Kill” and that’s unnecessary filler. The first 40 minutes or so are truly tedious and largely superfluous, and even 90 minutes in we’re given an on-the-run mission briefing (something I’ve never been fond of). Why the hell are we still having a mission briefing in the film’s second half? To waste time, that’s why, with Q offering up some of his lamest inventions in the entire series. Same thing with a pre-“Octopussy” harem of women that comes out of nowhere. It’s random nonsense to fill time, and don’t even get me started on the giant sea snake. WTF? The excursion to Rio earlier in the film at least provides colourful filler so I didn’t mind that part so much. The rest is so dry and boring I was kind of glad for that brief distraction. Equally distracting but less enjoyably so are those musical cues I mentioned earlier. There’s a moronic and unnecessary in-joke involving the tune from “Close Encounters” that’s even worse than the “Lawrence of Arabia” homage in “For Your Eyes Only”. We later get that clichéd love theme used in a lot of comedic love scenes, plus a blatant steal from an iconic western with Moore dressed as an actor/character from an entirely different western. It’s dumb, dumb, dumb stuff that Barry should’ve been ashamed of. Speaking of dumb, the fucking gondola speed boat chase. Yeah, let’s call this one for what it is: The assassin in the coffin preceding it is bad enough, but the gondola hovercraft is the single dumbest thing in any Bond film not involving an impossibly invisible car. The second worst Bond vehicle of all-time (behind the aforementioned car from “Die Another Day”), don’t even get me started on the frigging pigeon doing a double-take. It’s all so very wrong. A later speedboat chase is a bit better but I see zero sense in having Jaws on a speedboat, especially when they don’t go for the obvious joke. Richard Kiel’s Jaws returns here inexplicably and in very poor fashion. He was a seemingly indestructible behemoth in “The Spy Who Loved Me”, but here Jaws proves limp and relatively ineffectual. Worse…he falls in love. Jaws falling in love is a throwaway gag that should’ve been thrown away. Yes it plays into his late ‘face turn’ towards the end, but that’s so unconvincing (are we to forget that he’s a killer?) that it all seems so unnecessary and just adds unnecessary length and tedium to a film already rife with it.

Tedious is certainly the word to describe the film’s villain, wealthy industrialist Hugo Drax. Cut from the same cloth as Goldfinger, Largo, and especially Stromberg he’s even worse due to being played by Michel Lonsdale. A sometimes solid actor (particularly in “The Name of the Rose” and “Ronin”), Lonsdale gives the worst and most constipated performance of his career. He spends the entire film looking like any sudden movement will cause him to have an earth-shattering bowel movement. Drax, in addition to being played in stiff fashion, is also a completely unthreatening villain. How unthreatening? He offers Bond a cucumber sandwich, and it’s not code for his penis. This is our villain. Cucumber sandwiches. Yeah. The character is portrayed as a wannabe gentleman, offering up such polite threats as ‘Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him’. Such oh-so witty polite descriptions of violent things are more eye-rolling than anything. I kinda get what he was going for here, but he’s too polite and even more effete than Charles Gray’s limp-wristed Blofeld in “Diamonds Are Forever”. He’s a total bust and has zero menace. When you find out his evil plan, it’s basically Stromberg in space and indeed the climax plays like a space station version of “The Spy Who Loved Me”.

The climax suggests a lot of money was spent, the rest suggests the film wasn’t worth the expense. There’s particularly idiotic costume design on board the space station, and the laser battle is almost as idiotic as the fucking gondola. There’s some OK if stupid ninja action, but if ever there’s a Bond movie where ninja action is appropriate, this isn’t that movie. Why does Drax have an Asian henchman? ‘Coz Oddjob, I guess. It’s capped off by an awful final line by Q, but it’s so awful that it’s almost charming, so I’ll allow it. I’ll take amusement anywhere I can get it in this bloated tedium. The best thing in the entire film is the production design by Ken Adam, and even he has done better (specifically “You Only Live Twice” and “The Spy Who Loved Me”).

One of the series dullest and dumbest films, even star Roger Moore looks entirely unenthused here. Terrible villain, forgettable girls, a ridiculous script by Christopher Wood (unsurprisingly the co-scribe of the previous and slightly similar “The Spy Who Loved Me”), and some of the worst gadgets and vehicles in the entire series. Yeah, this one kinda sucks…and yet it was a massive hit at the box-office. Go figure. 

Rating: C-