Release and reception
Moonraker premiered on 26 June 1979 at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. It grossed an opening record for the cinema of £67,139 in its first week and was the number one film in London and went on to gross £10.7 million in the UK. Three days after the London opening, it went on general release in the US, opening in 788 theatres with 900 prints struck; it was United Artists' widest opening at the time. It grossed $14,744,718 in its first week from 900 bookings. On the mainland of Europe, the most common month of release was in August 1979, opening in the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden between 13 and 18 August. Given that the film was produced largely in France, and it involved some notable French actors, the French premiere for the film was relatively late, released in that country on 10 October 1979. It saw a record attendance of 413,314 in its first week in France. Moonraker grossed a worldwide total of $210.3 million, making it United Artists' highest-grossing film at the time, surpassing The Spy Who Loved Me.
Moonraker received a mixed reception by critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 59% approval rating based on 57 reviews, with an average rating of 5.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Featuring one of the series' more ludicrous plots but outfitted with primo gadgets and spectacular sets, Moonraker is both silly and entertaining." On Metacritic the film has a score of 66% based on reviews from 13 critics.
The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby called Moonraker "one of the most buoyant Bond films of all. Almost everyone connected with the movie is in top form, even Mr. Moore. Here he's as ageless, resourceful, and graceful as the character he inhabits." Canby subsequently said the film was, alongside Goldfinger, the best of the series.
The Globe and Mail critic Jay Scott said Moonraker was second only to Goldfinger. "In the first few minutes—before the credits—it offers more thrills than most escapist movies provide in two hours." During the title sequence, "the excitement has gone all the way up to giddy and never comes down." Scott admired the film's theme song and cited with approval the film's location work. He also singled out Ken Adam's sets, dubbing them "high-tech Piranesi".
Frank Rich of Time felt "The result is a film that is irresistibly entertaining as only truly mindless spectacle can be. Those who have held out on Bond movies over 17 years may not be convinced by Moonraker, but everyone else will be."
Reviewers such as James Berardinelli praised the visual effects and stunts, and film scholar James Monaco designated the film a "minor masterpiece" and declared it the best Bond film of them all.
However, other critics consider Moonraker one of the lesser films in the series, largely because of the extent and absurdity of the plot which takes James Bond into space, some of the ploys used in the film for comedic effect, and its extended dialogue. In November 2006, Entertainment Weekly ranked Moonraker fourteenth among the Bond films, describing it as "by far the campiest of all 007 movies" with "one of the worst theme songs." IGN listed it eleventh, calling it outlandish and saying that despite the actors "trying what they can to ground the film in reality, the laser gun/space station finale pretty much undercuts their efforts." Norman Wilner of MSN chose it as the fourth-worst film of the series, considering that the film "just flat-out sucks."
Critic Nicholas Sylvain said "Moonraker seems to have more than its share of little flaws and annoyances which begin right from the opening pre-credit sequence. The sheer idiocy (and impossibility) of having a fully fueled shuttle on the back of the Boeing during the trans-Atlantic crossing should be evident, and later in the film, the whole Jaws-falls-in-love and becomes a 'good guy' routine leaves me rather cold, and provides far too much cheesy comedy moments, as does the gondola driving through the square scene."
In a review of the film from 1979, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune took a critical view of its amount of product placement, and observed: In the beginning of the Bond series, before they were thought of as a series, each film was a good action picture with a colourful, entertaining hero.
Today, they come off as conglomerate business enterprises rather than movies. How else does one explain the intrusive commercial plugs in "Moonraker" for Christian Dior perfume, British Airways, Bollinger champagne, Glastron boats, and Seiko watches? Truly, money derived from these plugs can't be worth the loss of story continuity when the products are flashed in front of the camera. Someone is being awfully cheap about the plugs, which borders on incredibility because the James Bond series is one of the surest moneymakers in the film business. Maybe the producers of "Moonraker" are blind to story construction?
That certainly would explain the film's failure.
In a review of the film from the same year, the Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, while clearly expressing his approval of the advanced special effects and Ken Adam's extravagant production sets, criticised the pace in which the locations of the film evolved, remarking, "it's so jammed with faraway places and science fiction special effects that Bond has to move at a trot just to make it into all the scenes."
Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com said of the film: "Most rational observers agree that Moonraker is without a doubt the most absurd James Bond movie, definitely of the Roger Moore era and possibly of all time." However, while he criticised the extravagance of the plot and action sequences, he believed that this added to the enjoyment of the film, and particularly approved of the remark "I think he's attempting re-entry!" by "Q" during Bond and Goodhead's orbiting of the Earth which he described as "featuring what might be the best double entendre ever."
Reviewing Moonraker, film critic Danny Peary wrote, "The worst James Bond film to date has Roger Moore walking through the paces for his hefty paycheck and giving way to his double for a series of unimaginative action scenes and 'humorous' chases. There's little suspense and the humor falls flat. Not only is Jaws so pacified by love that he becomes a good guy, but the filmmakers also have the gall to set the finale in outer space and stage a battle right out of Star Wars."
The exaggerated nature of the plot and space station sequence has seen the film parodied on numerous occasions. Of note is the Austin Powers spoof film The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) which, while a parody of other James Bond films, makes reference to Moonraker by Dr. Evil's lair in space. The scene in which Drax is shot by the cyanide dart and ousted into space is parodied by Powers' ejection of Dr. Evil's clone Mini-Me into outer space in the same way.
Sean Connery, who had played James Bond in six of the first seven films in the series, said in an interview: "I went in London to see Moonraker with Roger and I think it's departed so much from any sort of credence from the reality that we had [in my six films]." He also criticised the film for having "such a dependence on the [special] effects" and said that it had "no substance".
Jim Smith and Stephen Lavington, in their 2002 retrospective Bond Films, thought the movie shared too many similarities with its predecessor (The Spy Who Loved Me), and faulted Bond's "patronising" attitude towards women and Holly Goodhead's ineptitude. They summarise Moonraker as "ghastly, painful viewing."
However, the opening skydiving sequence, in which Bond is pushed out of an aeroplane by Jaws, and must obtain a parachute from the pilot skydiving below him, has come to be considered one of the series best pre-title sequences. It is frequently lauded by critics and fans as one of the most spectacular action sequences in the Bond series.
