Defence: Moonraker is the best James Bond film

Roger Moore’s fourth outing as Ian Fleming’s 007, Moonraker, is often considered not only to be the worst film of his incarnation, but also one of the worst of the whole Bond series. However, if like me you have a great appreciation for kitsch, then perhaps you will view this film not as an example of the Bond series taking silly antics too far, but rather as a self-parody of Bond itself. As far as I’m concerned, Moonraker is (perhaps unintentionally) the funniest and most entertaining Bond film, and actually much more enjoyable than some of Moore’s other, more serious films, particularly the rather dour For Your Eyes Only.

The film first and foremost has an excellent villain in the form of Hugo Drax, played in a brilliantly deadpan manner by Michael Lonsdale, who is far more entertaining than many of Bond’s other foes. While he’s not on a par with the likes of Blofeld, he does have some cracking one-liners, the highlights of which are the comically self-aware, ‘You persist in defying my attempts to provide an amusing death for you’, and, ‘You have arrived at a propitious moment, considered to be your country's one indisputable contribution to Western Civilization: afternoon tea’.

The film’s Bond girl, Dr Holly Goodhead, is, name aside, genuinely not a bad female character, especially for the 70s. Unlike so many other Bond girls, including those of more recent times (Skyfall, for instance), she isn’t merely there as eye candy with little relevance to the plot. It’s only because of her that Bond is able to get into space, she pretty much holds her own against Bond in conversation, and actually shows him up for his sexism on their first encounter; when Moore’s Bond raises that eyebrow and says ‘a woman’ in a tone of surprise that Dr Goodhead is female, she replies ‘your powers of observation do you credit, Mr Bond’.

The main downfall of Moonraker according to its critics is that it’s essentially just a cash-in on the Star Wars craze. While undoubtedly true, this is by no means grounds for saying the film is intrinsically naff. However, the extension of this criticism is that taking Bond into space and having a massive laser-showdown at the end is simply taking things too far, and that it breaks suspension of disbelief. Even Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum said of the film that ‘we went too far in the outlandish’ and that ‘Roger spoofed too much’.

But wait a second… anyone who has watched the preceding Bond films, including Moore’s most acclaimed film, The Spy Who Loved Me, will know that this charge is hardly one that can be applied to Moonraker alone. The Spy Who Loved Me featured a submersible villain’s lair, a ship which swallowed submarines, a car which itself turned into a submarine, an MI6 base inside an Egyptian pyramid, and a parachute emblazoned with the Union Jack. So much for a secret agent. Yes, I suppose taking Bond into space is a bit far-fetched, but space shuttles do actually exist (if not laser guns), so in a way it’s not really all that ludicrous.

While the film does go further than any before it in being over the top, it manages to do so in a way which I feel is really quite funny, even if unintentionally so. If you go into Moonraker expecting a serious film on the lines of Casino Royale then you are going to be disappointed. If, however, you accept it for what it really is, a film that falls into the so-bad-it’s-good category, then you’ll probably enjoy it a lot more.Oh, and to top it all off, the movie ends with possibly the best double entendre in film history. As Bond and Holly orbit the Earth, getting it on at the same time, M asks just what is 007 doing, to which Q replies, ‘I think he’s attempting re-entry’. I rest my case.