Moon takes place on the dark side of the moon, and watching it is a little like being there.
Movie Information
Rating:
Actors:
Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey
MPAA rating:
R (language)
Synopsis:
Space miner Sam Rockwell loses a bit of his sanity at a remote moon base with a robot (Kevin Spacey) as his only company.
The film has intelligence. It has Sam Rockwell, an actor with the range and sense of fun of the young Jack Nicholson. And it has the amusing touch of a computer that speaks with the voice of Kevin Spacey. (In the entire universe, is there anything less reassuring than the sound of Spacey calmly insisting that everything is OK?) But Moon is boring. Agonizingly, deadeningly, coma-inducingly, they-could- bury-you-alive-accidentally boring.
You know how astronauts walk on the moon, slowly, in heavy boots, through a light atmosphere? That's how the action moves in Moon. Director Duncan Jones, who wrote the original story, has enough material here for what could have been one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes of all time. Seriously, Rod Serling could have done wonders with Moon, a story that would have blossomed under the twin constraints of limited time and a TV audience in need of constant stimulation.
But Jones has all the time in the world, and so he takes his small story, fills it up with helium and lets it float in place, until the audience becomes hypnotized and noses hit the floor. Rockwell plays an astronaut named Sam, who is stuck up there on a three-year assignment, managing an energy station. He is by himself, and for reasons that are later explained, he has no direct communication with the Earth. His only company is Gerty the robot, voiced by Spacey to sound even spookier and more unflappable than Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As a piece of entertainment, Moon is a failed experiment. Yet though it never becomes enjoyable or gets even within hailing distance of fun, it has some interesting ideas. Right around the time Sam is climbing the walls – and the audience is ready to climb them with him – another astronaut shows up. It's an exact clone of Sam, also played by Rockwell.
Suddenly, we start wondering, what is the nature of a society that would clone a technician? And what does that mean for both men? At the same time, we start appreciating things – that Rockwell creates a distinct personality for each "Sam," and that the movie shows both Sams inhabiting the same frame seamlessly. There's also a plausible emotional current, in that both men are in love with the same wife, played by Dominique McElligott.
Yet, these virtues are in no way visceral. They are very much from the head up, and their pleasure is akin to finding a good article in an in-flight magazine. The unalterable condition is the flight itself, or in this case the movie, which is so dull that we have to keep searching for ways to amuse ourselves. At least with a plane you actually end up somewhere.
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