It's good, yeah, they just need to improve their marketing

Rating: 7/10 (7 July 2011)

Moon is a one of a kind. A film cunningly disguised as a sci-fi film whilst trying to come across as a seemingly flawless character piece ... and it sort of works. From the premise, the title and even the tagline I became convinced this was film about a lonely man hallucinating (and with slogans like "the last person you expect to find is yourself" you would be wise to think so) but oh no, no it isn't - the slogan is not metaphorical or deep ... it means it literally. Sam Rockwell literally meets Sam Rockwell. This for me was a very clever twist ... almost. Okay, so I watch this film for a psychological one man thriller and get a story about other things instead. This is where I get a mixed reaction - yes, it was great that it was unexpected and very original but where it fails is that this left me nagging for the next hour "so wait, this is only his imagination, right?". And it never gives way so right up to the 85th minute of the 90 minute run time I'm expecting "it was all a dream" to jump out of nowhere then the film ends ... literally ends. Da-dahh - nothing really happened. I admire the film but feel that despite its entire story told at such minute detail it ended with little or no ending in the sense what it needs to round it off. The problem was that it tells you what it intends to deliver then goes along a different route before ending which is not a problem, it's 100% perfect as a story and as a plot but its the false premise of the first 20 minutes that kind of spoils it so do I argue the first 20 minutes are bad or the last 70 minutes. Neither are, in fact, just seemingly badly handled so was this a mistake on the part of the marketing or the part of the people who wrote what the films premise was on IMDb (which is why I watched the film). Trust me, one hallucination does not account for how this films premise is laid out. However as I thoroughly enjoyed the film it may just be that I'm one of those people that accepts the premise and assumes the ending is what I thought it would be - it wasn't and that is why its amazing. It's unexpected and very well thought out (and marketed as something else ... just to get people in). After this, we have the rest of the movie to discuss. The acting is alright on Sam Rockwell's part. His presence and acting are heavily praised but I don't see his acting as high a class as people claim. He's convincing and mostly handles the playing multiple selves easily but hardly dominates the screen and sometimes seems to be a small presence in the shots (which is probably due to the complicated editing of making about 3 of him appear on screen at some points). Kevin Spacey does a convincing job but his voice acting doesn't sound any different to what any actor would do with the voice of a monotamus computer. The character motivation is however somehow bizarre, the main character and his clones are mostly fairly simplistic but why did he start fighting with himself - it was actually a fairly pointless scene in the long run - and why did GERTY do all that stuff? He allows one clone to see another - wait, isn't GERTY supposed to be in on the whole conspiracy? Why did he explain it all to the characters - it's a computer = NO emotional attachment. The effects are pretty rubbishy - I know, it's a cheap budget but the effects remain obviously fake throughout and is it CGI? Well, it doesn't look real at all - the scenes with the Truck are lame and apart from the opening sequence no sequence on the moon has special effects worthy of blockbuster Hollywood, which this film decidedly isn't. The GERTY prop is a genius piece of equipment which looks like an actual slightly futuristic computer. The moral dilemmas involving commercialism is very well handled except to the last minute. Not only is it made unclear what the effects actually were but it seems hard to read between the lines on something that is already hard to read already. There's things like Orwell's 1984 which are full of messages which anyone with an average IQ can figure out but this has smaller messages but somehow has more trouble explaining it - it's briefly mentioned, hardly reflected on and not concluded as the ending is essentially a cliffhanger that we know will never be answered. This is a problem considering the pacing of the movie. The pacing is bad all round (hence the 7 rating) - it's slow, very slow. It may have been a good idea but during the middle section of the money, events not only repeat themselves but nothing at all happens. The occasional incident will occur but they are infrequently exciting and serve often no purpose. Taking these detours effectively ruin this movie and bores us to death. I like it being interesting and slow paced, I don't mind that but effectively shots of someone walking down a corridor for 5 seconds and repeated every other minute don't paint a great standard of pacing. It becomes nothing but a slow mess and essentially kills off my last remaining my brain cells that are concentrating. However I was totally engaged - I was bored but engaged and understanding every piece of dialogue so for a film, a story, a message and a new director it's pretty entertaining but as a whole, it's just uneven - oh, and why was there that amount of language, lesser language could convey the same emotion and not put off the character so much.