Moonraker

Rating:
Summary: Not The Best, But The DVD Extras Make It Worthwhile
Review: This is a movie most fans tend to pass over because the story is weak. Still, the final fight scenes in space are worth checking out, the location shots in Venice are lovely, and the audio commentary with Michael G. Wilson and Lewis Gilbert is like watching the movie with other fans. The commentary was filmed as they watched the movie themselves and they'll share behind the scenes info as you watch the scene itself. The audio commentary on other Bond DVDs that I've watched played more like interviews with crew members and was more distracting than it added to watching the film.

Rating:
Summary: Very silly and tired Bond space film...
Review: I suppose when one watches a Bond film, he isn't expecting realistic plot devices or depthy characters. But this movie goes overboard on giving us a completely unlikely premise. There is a point in the movie where American astronauts are doing battle in space with the henchmen of Hugo Drax... with lasers. ... but it's strange that on a certain level, this is actually pretty cool. It's a shame that the rest of the movie tries so hard in making the film a slapstick comedy. Plus, the pace of the film is tired and forced and, pardon the pun, never really seems to get off the ground. Add to this some completely awful acting and you've got yourself a pure stinker, Bond style.

Rating:
Summary: THE Worst Bond Film Ever
Review: This movie is a "classic" among the fans ( for terrible reasons I must add ):

1- It's just a bad cartoon, not a Bond Movie.
2- Moore did it only for the money. Period.
3- It has the ALL time worst Bond girl ever. She played a CIA agent if the CIA was ruled by Forrest Gump or Rain Man.
4- Rio de Janeiro as it appears on this movie is not the REAL Rio de Janeiro. It was an example of poor research, like Santos Dumont Airport named San Pedro Airport(???).
5- Bond producers did the impossible: turned Hugo Drax, one of the most Fleming's interesting villains into one of the worst of the Bond series. Let's see if they fix the error putting Drax personality on the new villain of DAD.

It's the worst, folks. It's simple as that, ok?

Rating:
Summary: MOONRAKER is out of this world!
Review: I think this is my favorite James Bond movie. I still think that one of the first sequences when they jump out of the plane is the most nerveracking in the whole movie. I think they also had some of the coolest gadgets in this too, like the wrist gun or Holly's perfume flamethrower or even the needle pen. I recommend this to anyone who likes Star Trek or James Bond of course. This movie has other great action sequences too like the gondola chase with the motorized gondola,but not very discreet. Get the popcorn and lemonade it's starting.

Rating:
Summary: Moonraker
Review: I know this film gets dissed by a lot of fans, but I think it is a good movie. If you don't want a story that you have to think a lot about this is your movie. I love that Jaws is back. The only problem is that he goes good. Anyway this film has great stunts and gadgets.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as i thought it would be
Review: I thought that Bond being in space would be awesome. But in the end, its not what I expected. At the end of "The Spy Who Loved Me", it said that James Bond will return in "For Your Eyes Only". But right after "The Spy Who Loved Me" was made, "Star Wars" was releashed and the Bond film producers decided to release Moonraker next insted of "For Your Eyes Only" since "Star Wars" was very successful. The plot in the film is not like one in any other Bond film. Anevil madman named Drax plans to whip out the entire human race from his space station orbiting the Earth so that he can create a new race of humans on Earth. But if you think the entire film is based in space, forget it, they only go up in the last thirty minutes. We see Bond travelling to Venice, California and Brazil to find out what Drax is up to. This film does have some good parts and we see Jaws return but I think the producers and directors of the film are over-doing it because this isn't really the type of thing you would expect in a Bond film and it has so many unrealistic special effects. Apart from Roger Moore (Bond) and Richard Kiel (Jaws), the cast is not very good and there aren't many memorable characters in it. Overall this film is okay and is worth a look if your a James Bond fan but others might not like it.

Rating:
Summary: Moonraker is a Star Wars spoof starring James Bond
Review: Synopsis: Bond is asked,as a personal favour to M, to expose a member of the exclusive gentlemen's club, Blades, who is suspected of cheating at cards. The man is Hugo Drax, head of Britain's Moonraker rocket program.
The stakes are increased as a security officer looking into Drax's work is murdered, and Bond takes his place in an effort to discover the truth behind Drax's motives and his past.

Synopsis(movie): Bond is sent to investigate the hijacking of a Moonraker shuttlecraft. The trail leads to millionaire Hugo Drax, a fanatic obsessed with the conquest of space, who holds the Nazi ideals of a master race.

Rating:
Summary: Bond Blasts Off Against One Of His Most Memorable Foes
Review: Moonraker is something of the guilty pleasure of the James Bond epic. Its setting in space is not really appropriate for the continuity - this despite the space context behind Dr. No, You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds Are Forever - and there is an admitted excess of comedy relief in the film's scope. But despite such weaknesses, the film contains many memorable scnees as well as one of the series' most enjoyably evil villians.

The Moonraker is a space shuttle, and one such is being flown to the UK - but it is hijacked in mid-air. Sir Miles Meservy (Bernard Lee in what turned out to be his final go as M; he passed away after completion of the film) summons James Bond - who must escape a mid-air attempt on his life and steal a parachute from a fleeing pilot, and then escape the return of Richard Kiel's Jaws.

James gets one of my favorite of Q's defense devices - a wrist-mounted nerve-activated dart discharger - and then flies to California, where he is escorted to the vast territory of space industrialist Hugo Drax by his pilot Corinne (Corinne Clery). The film very cleverly disguises Paris airport and an ancient palace in the French countryside as California, via strategically edited Derek Meddings miniatures of Drax Industries' construction, windtunnel, and testing structures and also in Drax's palatial estate - "every stone brought from France," as Corinne explains.

James meets Hugo Drax (Michel Lonsdale, his name anglicanized in the credits for the benefit of US audiences), and in Mr. Drax we see the most understatedly confident - and sinister - of Bond's adversaries - "Look after Mr. Bond, see that some harm comes to him," he says in tremendously effective understated monotone. Drax turns James over to engineer Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) who doesn't take kindly to James' flirty behavior. She escorts him to a centrifuge and asks him to try it - but Drax's Chinese manservant makes a key change in the control room that means James will be crushed by G-forces until his wrist gun blows out the cockpit's circuitry. Here Roger Moore is exceptionally effective as he pantomines the sickening dizziness of escaping death in the centrifuge while Goodhead tries to help him to his feet.

Once James recovers, he and Corinne check papers in Drax's wallsafe, and after a quail shoot in which Drax invites James to participate (and which leaves a would-be assassin on his face), James is escorted to the airport - and in the series' most genuinely gruesome scene, Corinne is dispatched by Drax's hunting hounds in the claustrophobic pincer of the woods.

James finds a key clue in a vial of lethal liquid in a lab located over an antique museum - liquid that proves deadly to two scientists in another strikingly effective scene - and James then escapes assaault by Drax's manservant, but when he alerts M and Minster Frederick Grey (Geoffrey Keen), Drax pulls the ultimate switcheroo, leaving Freddie Grey mortified and M forced to relieve James of duty - officially, that is.

James and Holly Goodhead then decide to stop working against each other, and their relationship takes a positive turn when they escape an attempt by Drax's newest hired assassin - Jaws. But the full nature of Drax's activities only becomes clear when James tracks down his lair in the deepest portion of the Amazonian jungle - highlighted by one of John Barry's loveliest music pieces as James follows beatiful women into an ancient Mayan temple that proves not to be ancient at all.

James finally finds Holly - note the conference chamber in which James and Holly reunite; if it looks like the conference chamber on the Death Star, it is - the exact same set, redressed. The two then must work together and fly a Moonraker shuttle to Drax's ultimate base of operations, a setup straight out of Noah's Ark. James and Holly then get unexpected help from an old enemy who has found an unexpected close new friend - at the film's end he and the well-endowed blonde lady toast with champagne; "Well, here's to us."

James and Holly, meanwhile, must literally sweat out the tremendous heat of the earth's ionosphere in an exciting space chase - and at the end, the weightlessness of space is the perfect venue for lovemaking, leading to the film's drop-dead best double entendre - "My God, what's Bond doing?" storms Freddie Grey; Q, not viewing the in-cockpit video cam but instead reading the tracking scanner, replies that James is attempting reentry.

Rating:
Summary: James Bond: Moonraker VHS review
Review: Some of the scenes are too cruel to comply with the PG rating, such as the scene where Bond was fighting the snake, also the scene near the beginning of the video where Bond was being put into the high tech machine and almost died!

The variety of locations, i.e. California, Italy and Brazil was well planned. I still feel that in this film Roger Moore was not given the opportunity to express as much of his gentle humour and wit as in his other Bond movies.

Rating:
Summary: Far-fetched, but fun movie
Review: I enjoyed this movie. It has an interesting, if far-fetched plot, beautiful location shots, neat villains, sexy women, and plenty of action. "Moonraker" usually gets negative reviews from the critics and is ranked as one of the weaker Bond films. This is probably due to the last 20-25 minutes of the movie. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but it's something you would expect to see in Star Wars rather than James Bond. Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture had been released around this time, and their success may have inspired the Bond producers to imitate much of the outer space action. That was probably a mistake. Overall though, I found "Moonraker" to be a fun movie to watch. The DVD picture quality is very good, and like all James Bond DVD's, it has an excellent documentary on how the movie was made. The audio commentary is also informative.