The science fiction movie wastes no time in setting up the catastrophic events that are set to unfold. 

Within the opening five minutes, our protagonists, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry) are immediately plunged into the eye of the storm, as it were, and Emmerich doesn’t let up from there on out.

Nevertheless, there are some moments of merit among the chaos. The balance between laughing at the movie, or with the movie, is a fine line to tread, but the latter does occur fairly regularly. 

I firmly believe Emmerich and his team achieved exactly what they set out to achieve. Whether that equates to a good movie or not, however, is a different matter.

For a film clocking in at just over two hours, and one which starts at such a blistering speed, it’s a shame that this energy doesn’t quite propel the film beyond its opening act.

We learn of the impending danger of the moon’s rapidly-changing orbit after roughly 15 minutes, and then a flurry of floods, earthquakes, and crime, quickly follow.

Sadly, from this point, to the actual “fight the moon” moment we are promised, we endure an arduous slog of a second act, riddled with questionable science, soap-opera melodramatics, and a mass of stilted exposition dump.

The poor pacing of the movie, in general, suggests that Emmerich, who also penned the screenplay, had a very clear beginning and end to his story, but ran out of ideas in the middle.