Moonwalkers

It's all good English fun, full of drugs, brutality, and general late-'60s decadence. It's also weirdly slack for such an insane ride, as if director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet was afraid he might get in the way of Dean Craig's splendid story.

Forget a fake moon landing. "Moonwalkers" is a fake comedy ...

Director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, who devised the story, is dazzled by period style and puerile jokes, but nothing lands as especially funny, merely tired.

The misguided "Moonwalkers" invests too much in the comedy potential of things that haven't been funny for a long while.

Houston, we have landed in an overtly silly, mod-and-LSD rendition of '69 London that seems on loan from the Austin Powers sets.

[A] cheerfully insane, comically violent, often confounding, sometimes tedious but ultimately entertaining trip through the looking glass.

Playing a psychedelic Swinging Sixties riff on the notion that Stanley Kubrick faked the Apollo moon landings for NASA, Moonwalkers concocts a goofy slapstick scenario out of the famous conspiracy theory.

Along with a lot of laughs, Moonwalkers offers a lovingly critical take on pop culture, touching on themes of patriotism and film industry pomp, without getting cynical.

Bardou-Jacquet cut his teeth on adverts and music videos, and it shows; he gets an A for visuals and "groovy" set design, but a D for plotting, dialogue and the ability to milk a scene for a joke.

Rupert Grint earns a few chuckles throughout, as do a handful of the supporting players, but ultimately Moonwalkers feels a whole lot like a funny idea that never got fleshed out beyond its second act.

The whole thing has a retro swinging 60s vibe that I enjoyed. The actors all commit to both the lunacy on screen and its premise, and the result is a good natured and entertaining film.

Tarantino on acid subversive sixties stoner satire. But a combo ballsy big screen intersection of politics, publicity and propaganda that couldn't be more provocatively in the here and now concerning truth in movies and the media - if there ever was any.