In 1979, as a means to capitalize on the recent science fiction trend (brought about by a small, low-budget film called Star Wars), the Brocolli Brothers gave us this all new James Bond adventure. The theatrical trailer for the movie says that many films may promise you the moon, but only this one delivers. Despite the claims and the title, the moon doesn't actually appear anywhere in the picture.

The exciting opening sequence has James Bond (Roger Moore, lending a whole new meaning to the term "Junk Bonds") plummetting out of an airplane and fighting an inconsequential villain for the parachute. Once he gets it, Jaws (Ba-DUM) comes after him and quickly catches up. because, as we all know from high school physics, heavier objects fall faster. There's a bit of a scuffle, Bond opens his chute, and Jaws falls into a circus tent. Cue the opening theme.

Dow-d-d-dow-dow-dow-dow. Dow-dow-d-d-dow-dow-dow-dow. Wah-waaaah-wah-wah-waaaah!

Bond is back in England, talking to M and the Minister of Defence. It seems that a shuttle on loan from the Drax company was riding on a plane that exploded, but there was no trace of the shuttle in the remains. Bond's mission: Find out what happened. So, he goes to the Drax headquarters in California, where he meets a charming young lady with whom he'll eventually have meaningless sex.

Bond meets Drax (who is evil and looks a lot like Vandal Savage of DC Comics fame), they talk a bit, and Bond leaves. Drax sends his Asian manservant after him to kill. Like all Asian manservants of this era, this one wears a kimono, a Dorothy Hamill hairdo, and a severe expression at all times.

The next thing on Bond's to-do list is to meet the Bond girl. Her name is Dr. Holly Goodhead. Naturally, Bond first expects Dr. Goodhead to be a man, since science stuff is man stuff, and no woman in her right mind could possibly have the mental capacity to be a rocket scientist, but he's pleasently surprised to be wrong. Dr. Goodhead is somehow able to ward off his advances (for now), and Bond takes a joyride in the centrifuge, which is fatal if it goes past 10 G's (or something like that), and the only failsafe is a little red button to release when it's getting to be too much. Naturally, Asian manservant tampers with the wiring and takes the controls. He spins Bond right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby, right round round round, keeping an eye on the heartrate display, which, for some reason, is actually labeled "Display". When the centrifuge can't go any faster, the film is sped up to give us the illusion that it is. Bond is about to pass out, so he releases the button, which doesn't work, and then shoots his little wrist-dart thinger at something, causing the whole machine to slow to a stop.

Later that night, Bond snoops around and finds Drax's office. The charming young lady I mentioned earlier catches him, and Bond works his mojo on her. There's plenty of banal banter, and they quickly make their way to her bedroom (which is right next to the office). Once she's "shagged out" and "done", Bond gets up and starts snooping again. She wakes up to catch him, and he asks where the safe is. She doesn't tell him, but she looks at the hidden safe, and Bond, being the clever man he is, figures it out. He opens it using a nifty x-ray gadget, and takes pictures of the secret documents with his handy 007-cam, which will be available this coming holiday season. But guess who's watching in the shadows. If you said Asian manservant, you're right! He reports it to Drax, of course.

The next day, Drax is out shooting pheasants, and Bond stops by to bid him farewell, as the trumpeter plays the first three notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra, compelling eveeyone watching the movie to yell, "Dun dun!! Boom boom. Boom boom. Boom boom. Boom. Drax hands Bond a rifle and tells him to take a shot. Meanwhile, one of Drax's assassins is hiding in a tree, waiting to kill Bond. A pheasant flies by, Bond shoots, and the guy falls out of the tree. Pretty nifty, huh? Anyway, Bond leaves, and charming young lady pulls up in a golf cart. Drax terminates her employment and sends his vicious dogs after her. Naturally, being a mere dimwitted woman, she decides to leave the golf cart and run through the woods in her heels. She doesn't last very long.

Now, for some reason, Bond goes to Venice. He rides his gondola to Drax's glass factory, takes the tour, and marvels at the room full of priceless antique glassware, which we all know will be destroyed by the end of the movie (according to movie cliche 107). Later that night, Bond does more snooping, and he eventually finds a secret lab. There's a keypad at the entrance, though, and Bond doesn't know the code. Luckily for him, a scientist comes along and punches in the 5-digit code. Each digit, of course, playes a different note, so that anyone who's seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind has access to the lab. Bond goes in and hides until the scientists conveniently leave for a minute. He takes a vial of clear liquid and leaves a couple more lying around. The scientists come back in, the vials fall and shatter, and the liquid turns to gas, killing the scientists, but leaving the lab mice unharmed. Curious. As he's getting away, he encounters Asian manservant again. This time he's dressed in fencing gear. Guess where the start the showdown. If you said in the room with all the priceless antique glass, you're right! So, they fight, destroy a bunch of glass, causing millions of dollars of property damage, and eventually, Bond pushes him out a window where he falls into a band and dies.

He also runs into Dr. Goodhead at some point, and in the midst of product placement and mistrust, he figures out that she's CIA and going to Rio De Janiero. Somewhere in here, there's also an exciting boat chase. Bond is in his gondola (the boat), and he's floating through the waterways of Venice. He passes a boat with a casket, which opens to reveal a guy with throwing knives. He throws them at Bond and missies. Bond throws them back and hits. Then, along comes the speedboat. What's Bond to do? His gondola driver guy is dead. He's stuck. There's only one thing he can do. He flips the switch that turns the gondola into a speedboat. There's a dramatic chase with lots of shooting and stuff. Finally, Bond reaches a dead end, so he flips the hovercraft switch which turns the speedgondola into a hovercraft speedgondola. He tears through the streets of Venice on this atrocity of engineering, and he finally gets away.

Bond sends for M and the Minister of Defence, and they come over. Bond takes the to the lab, gives them gasmasks, and bursts in, only this isn't the lab. It's a big fancy room with Drax standing in it. What happened? How could...? Anyway, the Minister apologizes, tells M to take Bond off the case. Bond gives M the vial and tells him to have Q look at it. M tells Bond to take a vacation. How about Rio?

So, now Bond's in Rio. He gets a hotel room complete with exotic girl, and they decide to go to the secret Drax offices, but after they close. First, they need to kill five hours, so they get it on. Later that night, they make their way to the Drax building. It's carnival season, so there's plenty of people out and about making asses of themselves. Bond climbs into the building while the girl waits outside. Along comes Drax's new assassin. Guess who! It's Jaws! He tries to kill the girl who, for some reason, decides not to scream. After a bit of delay, Bond comes back with his piece of evidence and saves the girl just in time. Jaws gets carried away by festive partiers.

Will this movie ever end? What the hell is going on? Where does space come in? Don't worry. We're getting there.

The next day, Bond is on a mountain, peering through a telescope, and trying to find the Drax airport. Yep. There it is. What else is around? Who's that? Why, it's Holly Goodhead! He goes out to meet her and explains that since they're both on pretty much the saame mission, they might as well work together. She agrees, and they hitch a ride to the bottom of the mountain in a gondola (not the boat kind). About halfway down, Jaws bites throught the cable (which was actually made of licorice) and stops the gondola, with a little help from a nameless cronie. Jaws climbs down to the gondola to confront the two heroes, and they fight it out. Again. They trap Jaws in the cabin, and they slide down the rest of the way on a chain. Jaws goes after them and almost catches up, but they narrowly escape. Jaws can't stop the gondola in time, and it crashes through a building.

As he stands up and pushes all the rubble off him, he catches the eye of a young blonde lady in pigtails and glasses whose name is never mentioned. She gazes back at him, and they fall in love at once, as Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" theme swells up. No, I'm not making this up. So, Bond and Goodhead get captured anyway, and they're placed in an ambulance, where they're tied down to their stretchers, only Bond's stretcher has this neat little feature that allows people tied to it to get out by sliding the bar on the side in. Bond escapes and leaves Holly to the bad guys. Bond has important work to do, you see. First bond goes to the MI6 headquarters in Brazil. The reason for this is, of course, so we can show Bond in a poncho and hat riding across the plains to the theme from The Magnificent Seven. He shows up at the MI6 ranch, looks around, watches some monks do Kung Fu (these are Catholic monks, mind you, so instead of bowing, they do the sign of the cross), and finds Q working on the new Q stuff, like the hand-held laser rifle. M is also there, and he gives Bond some instructions, I guess, and Q entrusts Bond with a new boat, so long as he doesn't destroy it, which he inevitable will.

Now we see Bond in the new superboat speeding through some water, and some bad guys start to chase, including Jaws, whose blue-screen shots are amazing, by the way. It almost looks like he's actually on a boat. Almost. There's some shooting, a neat missile which blows up boats from the inside, and other such novelties. As is inevitable in many boat chases, the body of water is cut short by a gigantic waterfall. Luckily, Bond has his retractable hang glider strapped on, and he makes a daring escape, landing in the jungle, where he eventually makes his way to a little jungle oasis filled with pretty women that Bond would definitely give it to under different circumstances. There's a little trampoline-like thing that throws Bond into the little pool, where he fights the realest-looking snake you'll ever see in a movie. It's my belief that this is a symbolic struggle, illustrating James Bond's ongoing struggle with his libido, which has gotten him into trouble in the past, and now he's facing it head-on, hoping to defeat it once and for all. Either that, or it's just James Bond fighting the realest snake you ever saw. So, he kills the snake, and Jaws shows up and pulls him out of the water by his head.

Yes, we're getting to the space part. Hold your horses. We're finally in act 3 of the movie, so the space part isn't far off.

Ok, now where was I? Oh yeah. Bond is taken into Drax's top secret shuttle launch facility, where guards wear gaudy yellow jumpsuits and matching foam helmets, and there are orchids hanging from the ceiling. Shuttles are starting to take off. There are monitors showing T-some number and rising (e.g. T-6, T-7, T-8...). Drax explains the orchids but doesn't quite get around to divulging his entire plan yet. Bond is taken prisoner and placed with Holly Goodhead. Remember her? She's not bitter or anything. They're to be executed, burned alive under the rocket thrusters. Lucky for them, there's a convenient ventilation duct, and Bond still has his bomb-watch, so they get out pretty easily.

At this point, 5 of the 6 shuttles have taken off. The pilots for the 6th are on the quasi-futuristic cart to board the shuttle, but they are overtaken by Bond and Goodhead, who steal their uniforms, board the ship, and take off. Good thing the ship's on autopilot. The shuttle ascends through the atmosphere, releases its booster rockets and flies off to its mysterious destination. A couple minutes later, the giant fuel tank drops off. Let me repeat that last part. The giant fuel tank drops off. Not drifts off, not gets release. It drops off the shuttle and falls downward. Bond and Goodhead check the cargo bay, and they're surprised to see that it's filled with humans. Couples, to be exact.

They finally reach their destination, a big space station, just sitting there in space. All the shuttles have to dock manually, but that's fine, since all superspies are trained in docking space shuttles. The space station is dark. Not pitch black, though, just dark. There's also no gravity. Someone has to go in first and turn everything on. Now, doesn't that seem a little odd? I mean, obviously someone had to build this thing, test it out to make sure everything works, and put it in orbit around the planet, right? So, what, did they build it, test it, and put it in orbit, abandon it completely, and come back to it once they had everybody? Why wasn't anyone there monitering the place in case something were to go wrong?

But that's not the point. They all finally board the space station. No one on earth knows about this thing, though, because it contains a RADAR jamming system. I'm not up on my space technology, but I seem to remember that RADAR doesn't work in space, since it needs to pass through something, much like sound and light. Also, aren't there other ways of looking into space? I seem to remember some sort of exotic device that they used before RADAR. Didn't Galileo use one? What's it called? Oh yeah, a telescope! There's a giant space station in orbit around the planet, but no one's noticed it because it's invisible to RADAR and, evidently, impervious to telescopes.

So, everyone's on board the space station, and it's time for Drax to explain his nefarious plot. He's sending canisters of that toxin from earlier to the planet's surface, where it will wipe out all of humanity, but leave the rest unharmed. Then everyone on board would return to the planet and restart the human race as intended, with perfect physical specimens. After the little speech, Bond and Goodhead find the RADAR jamming system (which is in the same room as the gravity generator) and destroy it. They're promptly captured by Jaws, who also got to come along, even though they didn't make him a yellow jumpsuit. There's some fighting, and Bond and Goodhead are finally subdued.

Meanwhile, back on the planet, the US and the USSR both notice this new thing in orbit around the planet. The USSR thinks it's an American weapon (because they're godless commies), and the American military is just concerned. As luck would have it, the US military has a special space terror specialist group. They're basically astronauts trained in space combat. They're always on call, and there's always a space shuttle ready, 24-7, in case of emergencies just like this. They launch and head out to the space station.

Back on the space station, people are noticing that an American shuttle is on its way. They figure out that the RADAR jamming system has been destroyed, and just as Bond and Goodhead are about to be executed, Bond puches the gravity button, and everything starts to float. Here's how gravity works in space, by the way. If the space station is still, there's no gravity. If it's rotating slowly, there's full gravity. There's absolutely no middle ground. Also, three of the toxin pods have been launched to the planet.

The American shuttle arrives at the space station, and a bunch of Drax's minons pour out and start shooting lasers at the American space troops. They have to use laser guns because only lasers work in space. There's shooting and dying and people floating around. Bond and Goodhead get away. There's a lot of confusion. The shuttle docks with the station, and Goodhead lets the Americans in. Bond is off confronting Drax. At some point, someone turns the gravity back on, and Jaws sees the error of his ways and starts fighting the bad guys. All the excitement is a bit too much for the space station, though, so it starts to fall apart. It just does. Bond and Drax are by one of the airlocks. Drax picks up a gun and makes the classic Bond villain faux pas, talking instead of shooting. Bond kills him with a wrist dart thingy. Now he and Goodhead can escape. They take Drax's shuttle, which they somehow know has a laser cannon, and they take off. Well, they try. They see Jaws through the window and ask him politely to move the obstruction. He does, and they take off. Jaws and his woman drink champagne and plummet to earth. Don't worry. They survive.

So, now Holly and Bond are going after the 3 toxin pods. Bond blows up the first 2 with no problem. Then the gun jams, and he has to do it manually. It takes a couple tries, but he finally gets it. Then he and Holly finally get it on.

Moonraker is the greatest Bond movie ever (in the same sense that Star Trek V was the greatest Star Trek movie ever). I left out plenty of details in this review, and I encourage you to watch it at least once.