Kwp

There have been many documentaries about the technical issues of getting to the Moon, but this one focuses more on how the astronauts felt about it all. At turns funny (Buzz Aldrin admits he relieved himself right before stepping on the Moon because it was about the only spare time he was going to have for the next two hours), inspiring (Jim Lovell talking about reading from Genesis while orbiting the Moon), and poignant (several of the astronauts talk about the Apollo 1 fire), it's a riveting piece of film-making.

The footage itself switches between the "talking heads" of the astronauts and imagery depicting what they're talking about, loosely following the chronology of the space age, from Kennedy's declaration of the ambition to go to the Moon to the later Apollo missions with the lunar rover. There aren't any revelations in the mission footage, but then all that's been combed over many times. However, it's well put together and everything is tied in.

I got to see this film at a special showing at the Goddard Space Flight Center. When the film was over, the auditorium full of space geeks gave the director a standing ovation. I think it was well-deserved. While he humbly noted "It's you rocket scientists who really did this - I just put a film together," perhaps - as he also noted - this film will help inspire another generation as we take the next great leap into space, this time to Mars.

You'd think the first landing on the Moon would be dramatic enough without needing to make up stuff about it. However, this documentary seems to need to cast everything in the scariest possible light. It talks about the risks associated with the lunar module and mentions Armstrong's nearly fatal accident with the training vehicle, as if the trainer and the spacecraft had anything to do with each other. It makes the computer overload problem (the 1202 and 1201 alarms) encountered during the final landing sequence sound like a near-catastrophe when it was just an annoyance and not a risk to the crew at all. And it takes the "thirty seconds" call to mean thirty seconds of fuel left before running out, when it's actually thirty seconds before an abort is mandatory.

If you want to see a documentary or dramatization of Apollo 11, go for "From the Earth to the Moon" or one of the PBS documentaries, but skip this one.

As a longtime science fiction fan, I thought watching a movie version of "From the Earth to the Moon" would be entertaining. My mistake, at least in this instance. This is a long-drawn-out, story-weak exercise in patience. The director seemed to be stuck on establishing shots and irrelevant scenes, to the point where I began fast-forwarding past any scene that didn't appear to be advancing the story. This got me through the second half-hour in about five minutes. What story there is has only a vague resemblance to Verne's original, and one waits forever for the rocket to finally take off.

Even minor matters like the background music become annoying: instead of an original score, for the most part what plays in the background are snippets of patriotic American music, and often one wonders what this has to do with the scene.

All in all, if you want to see a screen adaption of Jules Verne, watch the classic Disney "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" or "Around the World in 80 Days", and avoid this outing.