‘Moonfall’ Review: Roland Emmerich’s Latest Serves Up a Lunar Disaster at Its Most Loony

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThe joke of Netflix’s recent “Don’t Look Up” is that scientists discover a meteor headed straight for earth, and even with six months to plan, humanity is too skeptical and disorganized to prevent it.

Meanwhile, in Roland Emmerich’s latest eye-roller, “Moonfall,” the joke is pretty much flipped: Everybody’s favorite satellite is set to collide with earth in, oh, a day or so, and that’s just enough time for two space jockeys to suit up, shuttle out and set things right.I say “joke” because “Moonfall” is designed to elicit incredulous laughter as its ludicrous plot snowballs from a high-concept hypothetical question (what if the moon suddenly changed course and came crashing toward earth?) to increasingly implausible complications on the theme, all while requiring Halle Berry, as acting director of NASA Jocinda Fowl, to keep a straight face while saying things like, “Everything we thought we knew about the nature of the universe has just gone out the window!” Like gravity, logic and how we define good acting.

Sure, “Moonfall” is all kinds of stupid, but it’s a heckuva lot funnier than Adam McKay’s all-star satire. I had a blast, and would gladly saddle up for a second viewing.As Hollywood’s leading disaster artist, Emmerich knows how to blow things up real good.

Science has rarely stood in his way, and this time around, it serves as a rickety jump ramp to all the really kooky twists that he and his “Moonfall” co-writers Harald Kloser (“2012”) and Spenser Cohen (“Expendables 4”) have up their sleeves for the film’s back half.