Jazz great Slim Gaillard’s interpretation of “How High the Moon” includes this existential pearl: “Everybody’s wondering how high the moon/ The moon never wonder how low you are.”
It’s something to think about, which is more than a sane viewer would say about Roland Emmerich’s new disaster film “Moonfall.” It’s as ber-zak as Gaillard’s creation, and in Emmerich’s career of perpetually putting Earth at the edge of violent extinction with “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “2012″ and others, this one’s the trippiest of all.
Ever since the 2008 drunken history lesson “10,000 B.C.,” I’ve been a guilt-free advocate of Emmerich’s escapism. Outside the outlandish mediocrity of “Stonewall,” which is actually less historically accurate than “Moonfall,” he’s a filmmaker with a delightfully consistent sense of scale and concerns (starting with broken families repaired by global calamity). He’s an ideal blend of form and content. There’s his pushy, arrhythmic editing, especially when darting between three subplots at once; blithe, bloodless carnage, often featuring big, watery threats; and comic relief clunky enough to complement the periodic rest stops laden with pseudoscientific exposition. Same ingredients, new dish, every time.
