Moonwalkers: Rumo à Lua

Seen at the Etrange Festival where it won the Audience Award. One of the coolest stoner comedy with a - as always - fantastic Ron Perlman and a Rupert Grint who obviously wanted to exit from the Harry Potter era. Regardless of the subject, this movie was for me an enormous laugh from the opening credits to the very end. It was even better because I didn't know anything about it, in particular that it was a comedy. Ron Perlman is sent by the CIA to England to shoot a fake movie of the moon landing directed by Stanley Kubrick in case of failure of the Apollo 11 mission. Of course, nothing happens as expected. Don't expect Citizen Kane, but I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

The poster, the cast and the plot made it seem like it could be an amazing movie, albeit it's far from amazing it's still entertaining.

I expected a more realistic approach on tackling one of the greatest conspiracy theories of our time, the one that is about the moonlanding in 1969 being staged (in order to beat the Russians to the task so they would still be seen as the most powerful country in the world).

A theory that I actually believe could be a true one but I won't dig too deep into that because if that actually did happen how it happen would most likely differ substantially from the plot of this movie as this one is solely about the comedy... and the action, which there was plentyful of, to the point that it might get too bloody for some sensitive viewers.

A lot of sex, drugs and rock n roll as well.

The acting is fine, Rupert Grint does really well in comedies as he's proved before with the slightly better 'WILD TARGET (2010)' which also got him entangled with gangsters.

Robert Sheehan I didn't even recognize as the bearded hippie-friend of Grint, despite 'THE ROAD WITHIN' with Sheehan being one of my favorite movies of 2015, so yeah he was good too.

Ron Pearlman does his thing as always.

Gets a little too druggy at times perhaps and the pre-credit montage was a little too much but overall yeah solid enough entertainment for sure.

Also the movie clocks in at 97 minutes not 107 minutes like IMDb lists it at.

Looks like an American film but is not: although shot in English, is a French-Belgian production on the script of English screenwriter Dean Craig.

It's a funny and ironic film, celebrating the psychedelic atmosphere of the swinging London (we are in June '69). You won't really laugh but you will have a good time watching: who doesn't like to watch magic mushroom-eating guys playing the good ones?

Everybody acts sensationally and the characters are so good that you will easily imagine a sequel. One word about the cast: Ron Perlman and Rupert Grint steal the scene but males will surely also notice beautiful Belgian actress Erika Sainte, previously unknown to greater American and British audiences

MOONWALKERS is the first funniest movie of this year even though we just started on 2016 but I'm confident enough to shout that aloud because it really is going to be tough for other comedy films from this point forward to top MOONWALKERS. It's so outrageously funny, you're going to be gasping for air from laughing too hard.

Written by Dean Craig and directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, the legendary Ron Perlman plays an unstable CIA agent, he's a Vietnam war vet suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but he's been assigned by the agency to locate and hire filmmaker Stanley Kubrick so that Kubrick would film a fake moon landing just in case America's actual moon landing fails. One unsuccessful rock band manager (Rupert Grint) and his confused friend (Robert Sheehan) see this as an opportunity. But things get complicated.

It's part con man comedy, it's part gangster comedy, MOONWALKERS is basically something that Guy Ritchie would concoct back in the day. And on top of that, the story is set in a psychedelic era, so it adds to how fun and unpredictable MOONWALKERS can get, you see these characters who are in way over their heads, and a war vet who's just aching to unleash his frustrations. It's a comedy that relies on mistaken identity, misunderstanding, and ignorance, MOONWALKERS doesn't try too hard to make you laugh because the characters themselves are already doing a fantastic job at that. Well-written, well thought out and well-acted, Rupert Grint and Robert Sheehan have excellent comedic timing, Perlman's take no-prisoner-approach is entertaining. I haven't laughed this hard since 2007's "Death At a Funeral," it's good to have that feeling back.

The film was fun, if anything. All actors play well. Ron Perlman is a delight as an old CIA operative that has the shakes from all his Vietnam missions and wants to kill everybody, Rupert Grint basically plays Ron Weasley without the wand and Misfit Robert Sheenan is great as an unreliable but fun druggie who is always wasted.

The plot is totally silly and at no time is this film in danger of being used as proof for conspiracy nutters that think we never went to the Moon, but the script is well done. I mean, all stories start with a crazy "what if" seed and then there is the actual writing. The writing was good. The seed in this case was that the Americans would hire Stanley Kubrick to make a secret film of a fake Moon landing in case the real one failed, all in 10 days. Yeah, right.

Bottom line: this movie teaches us that while the Americans were sending their kids to die in Vietnam, Brits were really cool and fun. The rest is history.