‘Moonfall’ movie review: Perfect Nineties-style disaster movie

Roland Emmerich is in fine fettle with this story of the moon being an alien ship and under attack

Didn’t Queen Hippolyta say it was the silliest stuff she had ever heard while watching the Rude Mechanicals’ play on Pyramus and Thisbe? Roland Emmerich’s  Moonfall, provokes a similar reaction. It is silly but immense fun. Emmerich, who has given us these ginormous disaster movies from  Independence Day to  2012, is in fine fettle with this story of the moon being an alien ship and under attack.

As it is knocked off its orbit, the moon plays havoc with the earth’s tides, gravity and tectonic plates. Cue the tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanos. As things fall apart, it is time for a motley crew to mount an operation that seems doomed to fail but succeeds with rousing music and all. Oh what joy it is to see this kind of CGI destruction, secure in the knowledge that all will come right in the end! 

What comfort to know that there are people who will do the right thing and save a world that is not laid low by an ever-mutating virus! In 2011, two NASA astronauts, Jo (Halle Berry) and Harper (Patrick Wilson) when repairing a satellite, see a mysterious swarm attack their orbiter, killing a colleague and knocking out Jo. No one believes Harper about the swarm, he is fired and the accident is put down to human error.