'Moonfall' review: Astronaut drama is a guilty pleasure at best

An unstable moon, the Earth in peril, a washed-up astronaut looking for redemption — if you’ve never seen a movie in your life, "Moonfall" may strike you as a work of dazzling originality. Or maybe you just haven’t seen a movie in the past two years of the pandemic — in which case, "Moonfall" may be exactly the Hollywood junk food you’ve been craving.

It’s a big-screen disaster flick directed by a modern master of the genre, Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," "2012"). His movies tend to combine survival-adventure stories with sudsy subplots — which is to say, they aren’t too far evolved from their 1970s ancestors, like "Airport" or "Earthquake." The formula still works, although in this case "formula" is a generous word. Written by Emmerich with frequent collaborator Harald Kloser (who also helped compose the score) and Spenser Cohen, "Moonfall" is basically a two-hour, greatest-hits compilation of other blockbusters.

It begins with astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) bickering affectionately while fixing a satellite, which is destroyed in a surprise attack. Scapegoated by NASA, Harper loses his job and his wife while Fowler goes on to rise through the ranks. Years later, K.C. Houseman (John Bradley), a lovable conspiracy theorist — remember when we loved those? — goes public with data proving that the moon is drifting dangerously out of orbit. Cue nationwide panic. Cue also Harper’s return to NASA as the only pilot skilled enough to fly a vintage space shuttle carrying a bomb to the moon.

There are few surprises or new ideas here, but "Moonfall" has an almost refreshing lack of embarrassment about itself. Nearly every scene is a climactic moment, albeit with virtually no connective tissue to explain why things are happening or even how the characters got from one location to another. "Moonfall" doesn’t care about such details, and it knows you don’t either — we’re all just here for the rousing speech, the implausible car chase, the "Take my hand!" cliffhanger.

How are the special effects? Passable. How’s the acting? Not bad, considering the dialogue. "Moonfall" is such a canny simulation of a Hollywood movie that it could have been generated by an AI. "It’s some kind of gyroscopic system," says one character. "It’s some kind of self-aware, self-generating singularity," says another. And yet another: "We’ve downloaded your consciousness."

Depending on your mood and level of generosity, "Moonfall" is either an egregious rip-off or a howling good time. This movie will download your consciousness — and feed it right back to you.