- Eleven films into the series, Moonraker is the first Bond film that feels totally lazy and uninspired, which is strange because all the ingredients for success were present. Director Lewis Gilbert handled the previous two great Bond films, You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me. Roger Moore was more comfortable as Bond the last time out, and Richard Kiel made for a memorable enough henchman. The ever-talented Shirley Bassey returns to deliver another opening theme, and the redoubtable John Barry provides the musical score. Ken Adam, who handled set designs for many of the best early Bond films is back, too. Of these, Adam should be the one getting top billing--Moonraker's towering set designs really are much better than any other aspect of the production.
- At the risk of being lazy and uninspired myself, maybe it's just easier to list the film's big problems? Let's start with the fact that it wastes the talented Michael Lonsdale by making his character Hugo Drax the most monotonous and boring Bond villain imaginable. Then there's the matter of the three Bond girls (Lois Chiles, Corinne Cléry, Emily Bolton), none of whom seem to be getting enough oxygen. The previously entertaining Jaws falls in love with a pigtailed mute (Blanche Ravalec), about which the less said, the better. Drax's only other henchman of note (Toshiro Suga) appears borrowed from kung-fu movies. Speaking of borrowing, the film is peppered with unwelcome references to The Magnificent Seven, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars, the latter of which surely inspired this film's enormously cheesy space-based finale. If you somehow need more proof that this film is a hack job, it features a hover-gondola careening down the streets of Venice, complete with reaction shots from multiple animals and a man who looks suspiciously at his wine bottle. Consider yourself Moonraked.
