Moonraker

Moonraker is another guilty pleasure Bond film, that with all the camp is still quote a serious film.

This has the great 007 elements, but misses a bit. We get the wit, we get the beautiful women, we get the gadgets, we get the non stop action, and we even get Jaws, a fan favorite, back. Jaws even gets to speak. Maybe it was in the contract. What is missing is the exotic locations and beautiful scenery. We do get outer space and jungles and water, but we don't quite get the exotic beauty that makes Bond films so spectacular. While the cinematography is not as good as others in the hay day, it does still beat the 21st century Bond movies which are so dull. Here, the victim is a maniac intent on genocide. His plan is insane, but he's a tycoon and that just makes him "eccentric" to other VIPs. The big scene is possibly during a festival, when Bond is accompanied by a beauty who keeps lookout while he goes into a building. The beauty notices a tall masked character edging ever closer to her. There's also the space battle, which doesn't work as well as the underwater battle of Thunderball, but it isn't bad. The direciton is pretty solid. It's just not a great milieu for a cinematic battle. All in all,it's an exciting film that gets hate from those who are jealous of entertainment that works, but it isn't in the top five. I rank it 7th greatest of the Bond films. Sometimes, I rank it 8th or 9th, but it keeps in that vicinity.

They can't all be winners. I mean, yeah it was action packed and the fight over the parachute was really cool. And Bond did have space elements in the movies before... but Moonraker kind of felt like it was jumping the shark a bit here. Thankfully it recovered, but this was a little too much for a 007 movie. And that is saying something because, when you go see a 007 movie you expect it to be a little too much from the start.