Moonraker

Broccoli serves the audience a space-shuttle hijacking, a jumbo-jet explosion and a protracted wrestling match between two men who are falling from the sky without parachutes. All this happens before the opening credits. From there, it's on to gondola chases in Venice, funicular crashes in Rio and laser-gun shootouts and lovemaking in deep space. Meanwhile, beautiful women come and go, talking (ever so discreetly) about fellatio. When Broccoli lays out a feast, he makes sure that there is at least one course for every conceivable taste...The result is a film that is irresistibly entertaining as only truly mindless spectacle can be. Read full review

THE BOND by which to compare all other Bonds is Goldfinger and by that standard Moonraker, the 11th chapter in the exploits of Agent 007, is second-best. But, by the standards of most of the other candy served up as summer fare, Moonraker is marzipan - it's so insubstantial it melts in your mouth, but its flavor is distinctive and you can't get enough of it. [30 June 1979]

Moonraker begins with one of the funniest and most dangerous (as well as most beautifully photographed and edited) sequences Bond has ever faced. Read full review

The visual effects, stuntwork and other technical contributions all work together expertly to make the most preposterous notions believable. And Roger Moore, though still compared to Sean Connery, clearly has adapted the James Bond character to himself and serves well as the wise-cracking, incredibly daring and irresistible hero. Read full review

Moonraker is mercifully much better than recent Bondage, with fantastic special effects, some excellent buffery (cracks at Star Wars, Close Encounters, Clint Eastwood, to name but a few), and the usual location-hopping style that makes Versailles feel like Disneyland. Read full review

Moonraker is a movie by gadgeteers, for gadgeteers, about gadgeteers. Our age may be losing its faith in technology, but James Bond sure hasn't. Read full review

While parts of Moonraker are rather silly (a trend during Roger Moore's tenure), solid special effects, well-executed action sequences, and a strict reliance upon the "Bond Formula" keep this film among Moore's better entries as the British superspy. Read full review

Moonraker, the newest James Bond spectacle, is a cheerful, splashy entertainment. The curators of the Bond museum do not surpass themselves with this exhibition, the 11th in the series, but they haven't fallen down on the job either. Moonraker is a satisfying blend of familiar ingredients, from the highly polished to the barely adequate. [29 June 1979, p.C1] Read full review

More impressive than entertaining. Read full review

Moonraker's only real imaginative surge comes in a rousing pre-credit sequence in which Bond is pushed out of an airplane and survives by deftly sky-diving to a parachutist and swiping his chute. After this, a bizarre blandness takes over. [2 July 1979, p.68]

The gadgets are up to the usual Bond standards, but fancy effects do not a movie make, and 007 is less satisfying floating around in space than when his feet are more or less firmly planted on the ground. Read full review

Bond meets Star Wars in one of the series' sillier outings. Read full review

This one doesn't look too bad, but it has no snap, no tension. It's an exhausted movie.