 [Larger view] | First Men in the Moon
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Average user rating:  | |
 My 5 year old boy enjoys this show very much. | |
| I enjoyed this show as a kid and bought it for my children. My daughter has little interest in SciFi, but my son enjoys all the classics: Forbidden Plant, Them, Godzilla, etc. He watched this every day for several days: the true seal of approval. There is suspense and adventure and buggy monsters. What more would a boy want? | |
 Gibbs! | |
| A famous American celebrity residing in the UK recently lamented the perfidy of the British worker after getting the builders in. Looking out the window at some builders doing up a shop across the street, I observe two men sitting drinking tea and one reading a paper. It was ever thus, as depicted in this film. The brilliant, if mercurial Professor Cavor pleads with his workers to watch the boiler harbouring his latest scientific discovery and they shrug off-handedly, engrossed as they are in a game of checkers. Needless to say the boiler explodes. It was America, of course, that inevitably boasted the first men on the moon. The afore-mentioned scene is no doubt played as a counterpoint to the Selenites moon colony which has a novel way of dealing with the likes of their own Gibbs, which is to freeze him until his nuisance value is needed. Cavor finds this equitable, and there's little doubt that the concept was close to H.G.Wells sensibilities as well, despite the film maker's insistance on a humanitarian counterpoint to the film's facist harshness with a multi-national moon landing crew at the film's beginning. Unfortunately, in the real world the American celebrity was forced to eat humble pie in order to get the house finished. FMITM suffers from some narrative problems in it's second half due to the fact that it mostly revolves around the reactive. "Look over there!" -"Run from that!" Etc. It is a curiously perverse film because it starts off rather like 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' and progressively darkens to the point of being almost repugnant, what with Cavor beaten up by an inexplicably contemptuous Bedford. The ending is frankly disturbing, too. Not family entertainment by any means, but then scriptwriter Nigel Kneale was morbid and pessimistic in his own work, not usually satisfied until his cast are lying prostrate like the denounement of 'Hamlet'. My favourite bit overall is when Cavor tells Bedford that Cavorite is a secret. "Will you tell me, then?" He is asked. "Yes. Yes, I will tell you" he replies in that endearing manner unique to Lionel Jeffries. An offbeat, but unique and largely forgotten film which is worth searching out. | |
| It could have been a good film | |
| As a kid, I watched this film several times, and I still occasionally get an urge to watch it. The story is about a small group of people who go to the moon, thinking they are the first to do so, but they find evidence to the contrary there. When they get back, they put the pieces of the puzzle together, and get the story of the real first trip to the moon from the lone survivor (if memory serves me right) from that first trip. Ray Harryhausen's special effects were state-of-the-art at the time. The special effects were like peanuts: you loved them but they made you want more (my apologies to those of you with peanut allergies; please substitute "chocolate" or "donuts" in my simile). The story is coherent and well-told, although there was too much comic relief ...although excessive comic relief was frequently found in science fiction movies back then. It still happens today, as in the terrible translation of "Starship Troopers" from novel to film. Back then, this country was in the midst of the Cold War, and I think film-makers worried about scaring people too much (a la the radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds"), so they inserted unnecessary comedy. Anyway, I liked this movie as a kid, and your kids will probably like it too, although they're spoiled now by hyper-realistic special effects and excessive action. Buy it or rent it, and have a ball. Adults might find it too cartoonish, as I did when I saw it again recently. |
