Lunchtime Movie Review

Year of Release: 1979

Running Time: 2 hrs. 6 min.

MPAA Rating: PG

Directed By: Lewis Gilbert

Produced By: Albert R. Broccoli

Distributed By: United Artists

Starring: Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel, Bernard Lee, and Desmond Llewelyn

Box Office Gross: $70,300,000 (9th Highest Grossing Film of 1979)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 62%, Audience 47%

Synopsis:  Moonraker, AKA “Bond In Space”, is the eleventh James Bond film and starts with the Moonraker space shuttle being stolen, in flight, from the top of a passenger jet.  If an airliner can fucking carry a space shuttle with no problem, then why the fuck do they need to charge $35 for our checked luggage?  Keeping with the flight theme, we next see our grandfather, I mean James Bond, in a luxury jet.  A fight ensues and Bond and Jaws, the only likable character from Happy Gilmore, fall out of the plane.  They battle over the only parachute.  Bond wins the parachute by throwing his Metamucil at Jaws thus causing Jaws to land on top of a circus tent.

Bond is told to investigate Drax, the space shuttle manufacturer, and goes to Drax’s secret French chateau in California, just off I-10 and highway 60, near Beaumont.  Bond and Drax meet and have idle talk over afternoon tea.  After tea, Drax tells his henchmen to kill Bond.  Tea went poorly.  The henchmen attempt to kill Bond via a g-force simulator and in a hunting incident rather than just outright kill the not-so-secret agent and blame it on some fall-guy.  Bond also meets Doctor Holly Goodhead.  That’s not a joke, that’s the character’s actual name.  Yeah, we know, they’re not even trying anymore.  But it’s not all fun and games for Bond, since he conducts some actual spying by photographing some of Drax’s secret plans.

The plans lead Bond to Venice where he immediately decides to take a tour of a glass making factory because that’s what old people do; right, Patrick?   Eventually, everyone was kung-fu fighting in the glass display area of the factory with the typical results.  Drax’s henchmen also try and kill Bond while he’s taking a leisurely gondola ride.  However, Bond’s gondola has a motor and a chase ensues.  Bond is about to run out of canal and be cornered when the gondola turns into a mother fucking hovercraft causing the bad guys to give up because the bad guy’s guns couldn’t possibly stop a vehicle supported by a cushion of air.  No word on if Bond’s hovercraft was full of eels…

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Theatrical Trailer

Music Video – Shirley Bassey – “Moonraker”