That popping sound you hear is the collective brains of scientists and NASA officials exploding at once. This is a remarkably dumb movie – ridiculous and stupid on a monumental level. Not to be taken seriously, not to be taken literally, not to be taken scientifically. It’s dumb with a capital um.

The flick is another great big disaster flick from Roland Emmerich. This time, the moon has fallen out of orbit and is spiraling towards the Earth. We don’t have months, we barely have weeks… but we do have a space shuttle we can get out of mothballs and launch, like, the next day. Much realism. Wow.

A big dumb movie can still be fun…. and this movie scrapes the atmosphere of big dumb fun. I was usually engaged as long as we weren’t focusing on the pointless family drama… though engaged can also mean rolling my eyes or cackling with disbelief at the gobbledygook they were laying down. The movie does slip humdrum character drama though to ruin the simple-minded explodey entertainment.

The flick largely follows the clichés of big dumb disaster movies… though seemingly with fewer actors and maybe a smaller budget than usual? Not that there aren’t ALL the special effects in this flick, but many of the disaster scenes are handily filmed in the dark to likely cover up some shortcomings. The movie is kind of murky that way.

But are the disasters otherwise good? I mean, sure… they’re fine. Tidal waves, boats flying in the air due to shifting gravity, moon-steroids slamming into mountains, etc. All the spectacle though sometimes really abrupt as if the movie ain’t got time for setups and sequence cohesion.

And then there’s the science fiction side of the film. There’s some neat gee whiz science fiction big ideas in the second half of the film. It’s hardly the best depiction of these ideas but I kind of appreciated the movie chucking reason to the wind and going for it. There’s some late stage exposition that’s just going to lose some people outright but I kind of enjoyed the commitment to the bit.

I wish I had more fun with this flick. I can live with it being dumb if it can be entertaining and the movie struggles with that last part (it aces being dumb as a box of moonrocks though). It’s a decent one of these films though it had the opportunity to be a better. Oh well. At least it’s better than Geostorm.

Score: 74