• Composed by Thomas Wander & Harald Kloser

Remember when Roland Emmerich movies used to be good? No, neither do I. I have to say though that his previous one, Midway – a disaster movie of a very different kind to his usual – was actually very well done. He returns to his usual kind of disaster with Moonfall – in which the moon does literally fall (Emmerich was probably highly disappointed when he turned up to the cinema to watch Skyfall a few years ago). It’s pretty bad, in just about every way. Anyway – remember when Roland Emmerich movies used to have good scores? Yes, so do I! They really did. No matter how ridiculous and overblown the movie might be, you could at least be sure of getting some first-rate film music in it. Until one day, all of a sudden, you couldn’t. Harald Kloser now produces and writes Emmerich’s movies as well as co-scoring them with Thomas Wander – and as long as he keeps doing those first two things, I guess he’ll keep scoring them as well.

There’s nothing going on in the music at all. It’s just sonic wallpaper for the movie, music for the sake of having music, but it doesn’t seem designed to actually do anything. When you consider the movie features space flights, gigantic action scenes, chest-pounding Hollywood heroism, rarely a frame goes by without some sort of explosion in it – there’s really no excuse to not have music that at least tries to be big and complement the scope of the visuals. Unfortunately, this is small. Generic suspense music textures are linked together with meandering strings and what I assume is meant to be ethereal-sounding synth choir, but without any dramatic urgency at any point it just plods impotently along. When I was a baby my mother used to leave me in my pram in the garden to watch the washing blowing on the washing line, sometimes for hours at a time. This feels like the musical equivalent.

Rating: *

facebook.com/moviewave | twitter.com/MovieWaveDotNet | amazon.com