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Director(s):	Richard Dale
Writer(s):	Tony Basgallop
Starring:	James Marsters • Daniel Lapaine • Anna Maxwell Martin • Kosha Engler • Trevor White
Genre:	Drama • Television
Website:	http://www.dangerous.co.uk/programmes/programme_moonshot.asp
Release Date:	November 17, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $14.49
Amazon:

The format of the History Channel’s Moonshot is a strange one. Similar to their prior Manson, the film contains both authentic documentary footage (interviews in that film, and verite footage of actual events in this one) and fictionalized re-enactments, but unlike that film, this one has the distinct disadvantage of following in the footsteps of many, many well-produced films and television shows about NASA in the 1960s, whereas nothing comparable had really been produced about Manson. That’s not always a liability (Lord knows they’ll always be enough room in national consciousness for another television movie about Hitler), but Moonshot turns it into one, taking too many cues from prior films to make its pseudo-documentary style feel like anything other than a cost saving gimmick.

Odds are good that if you went through an American high school at some point in the last forty years, you are at least somewhat familiar with the events presented in Moonshot, as well as their social context. At the dawn of the 1960s, the newly elected Kennedy vowed that we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, putting the recently formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration into a tailspin, as it had failed to beat the Russians to the first satellite, dog, or person in orbit landmarks. Enter pilots Neil Armstrong (Daniel Lapaine), Buzz Aldrin (James Marsters - yup, Spike from Buffy), and the constantly forgotten Michael Collins (Andrew Lincoln), whom, over the following tumultuous decade, would become involved in much of the testing (there were a whole lot of exploding rockets before they actually got anywhere), debate (you better believe there were more than three people who wanted to go to the moon), and drama (there was a significant chance that they weren’t coming back) that ensued. The interpersonal drama focuses mainly on the tension between Aldrin and Armstrong (Aldrin was a far more experienced space-walker, and believed that he deserved to be the first on the moon), and Armstrong and his wife Janet (Anna Maxwell Martin), who seems rather ambivalent about his going through with it. In the end, though, all divergent forces come together to produce what was one of the most iconic moments of the twentieth century, although for as many times as they stressed that this was a fictionalization of events (no less than three, with one of them coming out of the mouth of Buzz Aldrin himself), I half expected them to say that the whole thing was faked.

Remember The Right Stuff? I barely do, but that’s okay, because I remember Apollo 13, and some of the television miniseries From The Earth To The Moon. Remember that part where the wives are all worried about whether or not their husbands are going to come back from their adventures in outer space? Moonshot’s got one of those. How about press conferences where the astronauts are introduced to the world in maelstrom of flashing lights from reporter cameras? The scene where former rivals learn to work together? The tense mission control room where scientists labor around the clock? Check, check, and check. Look, they all happened in this scenario too, so it’s not as if I don’t understand why they’re all included in this film. They simply strike one as a little repetitive, especially when placed against the film’s massive launch sequences. Here, where the film’s predecessors cut to lavishly mounted recreations, Moonshot cuts to stock footage, all of it clearly cribbed from prior television broadcasts. If this had been done effectively, it might have been a great device, but it isn’t. It’s a cheap way out that never really feels fully considered, and makes a moderately entertaining film feel, well, Earth-bound.

While it would be unfair to criticize Moonshot for not having the resources behind it that Ron Howard did, it would have been nice if they had found something a little less gimmicky to overcome their budgetary limitations. Since the film resembles Apollo 13 in nearly all other respects that it was feasibly able to do, it’s hard not to walk away thinking that this movie effectively wanted to be Apollo 13, but lacked the ability to do so. It’s not the worst movie to want to be, but it’s enough to make you wonder why you don’t just watch that instead.

DVD Bonus Features

Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury Mission Galleries

Biographies of the Key Apollo Personnel

Five Isolated Tracks from the Musical Score -This is useful, because the score is fairly evocative, particularly in the space sequences.