Un pilote dans la lune

This is the first movie I ever went to see alone at the tender age of 8. It played the Paramount Theater in my hometown of Syracuse, NY. I went over the Easter holiday with money I had received from an uncle. I was so mesmerized by it I sat through it at least six times until my mother came down the aisle @ 9 at night calling for me. My lifelong love of the movies began here and so the picture holds a special place for me. That said, I watched this again recently, and despite its out of date science and themes, it still holds up because of the many solid performances and the sincerity behind its production. I was also amazed to see a very young Sally Field as one of the beatniks in the line up. Still great fun.

This film is cute little trick of a film. In the early days of space flights, it was time for a send-up. And the great character actor edmond O'Brien, was terrific as the "hard as nails" security agent. A treat for us Disney fans.

The comic highlight of the film is the "parade of usual suspects", when San francisco beatnik chicks are brought in for review. A real HOOT!

The alien chick is disarmingly funny, and I wish she could have had more films after this one. She was so fine, I wanted to sign up for astronaut training.

The pacing is slow, and the humor is formulaic, but I still get a chuckle out of this minor classic.

Wry satire skewing the government, the military, and the space program at a time when there wasn't that many films taking aim at those agencies. This was the Kennedy era after all, and Disney didn't make that many satires. Tom Tyron ("Texas John Slaughter")is good as the astronaut but French actress Dany Saval ("Boeing, Boeing") makes the film worth watching. The support actors fail to bring the script alive (good actors but dry direction lets them sway in the wind). Tommy Kirk appears in a very small, but adult role.

As the director of many films for the Disney Studios, both comedic and dramatic, James Neilson never livened up; his name in the credits usually means a picture with a steady, sometimes leaden pace. "Moon Pilot" is no exception, and one can only imagine family audiences from 1962 dozing through the movie's more sluggish sections. Tom Tryon was a good casting choice for the part of an Air Force captain chosen to orbit around the moon, yet his hot-tempered superiors on the ground (Edmond O'Brien and the usually-reliable Brian Keith) do nothing but bark at him and at each other. Dany Saval twinkles like a manic pixie playing a flirtatious young woman who may be a spy--maybe not. For the Disney faithful, there's also a monkey clowning around. Production values solid, theme song "Seven Moons" very sweet, though this is still an awfully slow rocket-ride into space. *1/2 from ****

Bearing in mind that this was a made-for-TV-movie, Moon Pilot isn't bad. Disney didn't blow their budget on it, but the production and effects were serviceable if spare. The actors try to inject as much into their bland dialogue as they can, but the writing isn't Disney's cleverest.

The genuine highlight of the film is the parade of loony beatnik girls toward the end of the movie, as the military tries to identify their astronaut's supposed space-chick -- Very funny. Dany Saval is adorable. To the best of my knowledge, I've never seen her before. She shows off to advantage the cute outfits designed for her. What a doll.