Movie Review: Apollo 18

            Oh, dear, what to say about Apollo 18. My my my.

            Now, I usually like mockumentaries. They interest me, really they do. But I think Apollo 18 took this and…threw the genre down a garbage disposal. I heard things about it when I first considered saving it. For example, it would make me jump. No, it did not.

            First ridicule, the story is hardly exciting, even when the plot “thickens” with the discovery of dead cosmonauts on the moon. The astronauts get to the moon, and they look around. They talk. They go to sleep. Wow, I’m riveted. Outside we catch one or two glimpses of something strange moving around where there’s supposed to be nothing. Great, an alien. Didn’t see that one coming.

This leads me to my second ridicule. Will this one look like a bug, too? It’s even better. It’s....wait for it…a bug that looks like a rock. ._. Really? A rock-bug alien? Is there nothing better to attack astronauts with, nothing more deadly in the realm of all things science fiction? Couldn’t a zabrak jump out and attack them for Pete’s sake??? All this time I’m sitting in my seat in theater 7 hoping to heaven that this will not be a waste  of my time, wondering what deadly animal could have led cosmonauts to die with fear plastered to their faces (cosmonauts!!!), wishing the thing would just be shown already…only to find it’s a bug-rock. Way to let a girl down.

                                                 a zabrak (namely, Darth Maul)

Third, NASA was filled with jerks who knew what was going on in the first place and sent the astronauts simply to verify that cosmonauts had landed…WITHOUT the intention of bringing their boys home. Translation? The Americans were stranded without a hope. While this would have been a good twist if the story had been written right, it only proved to frustrate me even more. I was left thoroughly unsatisfied and begging to be thrown a bone, and I ESPECIALLY hated that their families were told they all died in a training accident. Wouldn’t this sound, I don’t know, FISHY to them?? All three pals dying in a freak training accident for NASA?? Yeah, okay.

Lastly, the plot was predictable. I knew when I was going to “jump” and what would happen next. While I usually don’t mind guessing at the plot, being spot on every time is annoying. I like to be surprised, and the only surprise here was at myself, that I had actually decided to see Apollo 18.

There was hardly a thing to make me want to see this again, a B-A-D quality for a movie to have. Seriously. 1 kernel out of 5.

Oh, and don’t waste your time with Apollo 18.