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 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.

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.

It's the movie Buzz Aldrin does not want you to see!

I herd for years about the rumor that the government got Stanley Kubrick to film the moon landing of Apollo 11, but the movie flushes out the conspiracy and it goes right in the toilet for our own amusement.

Ron Perlman plays a stressed out G man who is assigned to go to London and get Kubrick to agree to film the fake space landing (just in case Apollo 11 does not make it), only to get conned by a rock band manager played by Rupert Grint to believe one of his stoned out clients is the guy whose directing Space Odyssey, and when the agent finds out, there lives depend on getting that footage made.

Ron Perlman and Rupert Grint where very good in this movie. It was an interesting contrast as I found humor in Perlman's quietness, as a man who just came back from a mission in Vietnam and is in real need of a break going out on another mission. Meanwhile Grint's life was more outrageous and screw ball that made for some violent outburst in comedy.

I thought it had some good gags and great jokes, which, along with the story content, made it pleasant to watch.

It's a Guy Ritchie vs Tarantino style movie with Ron Perlman doing a great job as a sloppy arrogant agent that manages to mess up a mission to fake the moon landing teaming with two idiots that fooled him. A fun movie with a funny plot done in a very convincing manner.

This only proves how a good script, good shots and good direction together with good actors that are not necessarily celebrities - can end up with a great result that does not fall short of the big pictures. Food for thought for big studios IMHO and Perlman here shows sides which I've never before seen him do.

Definitely worth watching. Amusing, not hilarious but fun to watch.