Moonshot (Blu-ray)

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The real Mr. Aldrin introduces this feature film treatment of the lives of the three trailblazers who piloted Apollo 13 to the moon forty years ago, and he gets to say one of the ten coolest things anyone could possibly hope to say, and not be called a liar: "Hello, my name is Buzz Aldrin." Of course you can call Buzz Aldrin a liar if you want to but this is what will happen to you. Why? Because he´s Buzz Aldrin and you´re not.

Unfortunately, Buzz Aldrin´s introduction is the most exciting thing about this tepid feature treatment of the greatest chapter in the story of American exploration. The film races quickly through the several years preceding the historic Apollo launch, beginning with the Gemini missions. The characterizations are delineated in simple terms. Neal Armstrong (Daniel Lapaine) is the straight-laced one. Buzz (James Marsters) is the more temperamental one, and Michael Collins (Andrew Lincoln) is the more laid back one. All three men are ambitious, as any astronaut would have to be, and the central tension of the narrative involves both who will be selected to go to the moon, who will pilot the command module and, biggest duel of all, who will be first to step on the moon.

The script by Tony Basgallop balances work and home life, giving us frequent but superficial glimpses of the astronauts´ wives and kids. The wives endure gracefully, the kids miss their dads, etc. The only drama generated in the domestic scenes stems from the clash between alpha male Buzz and his equally alpha male father (Michael J. Reynolds) who doesn´t think being a mere astronaut or just the second man on the moon is enough of an accomplishment for his son.

At the halfway mark, director Richard Dale finally takes us into space with the three legends. This should make for great cinema, and there´s nothing wrong with the way Dale directs these sequences, but the problem is that most of us have already seen the documentary footage and the recreations simply cannot compare. In fact, Dale served as executive producer on two vastly superior documentary projects covering the same subject: "In the Shadow of the Moon" (2007) and the great series "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions" (2008).

With such great material already out there, why bother with a docudrama at all? The space scenes contribute nothing new, and the domestic sequences are too brief to provide any meaningful insight into the lives of Armstrong, Aldrin or Collins. The best parts of the movie are the actual archival shots that are mixed into the fictional scenes. It´s not that "Moonshot" is a bad movie. It´s just that it´s unnecessary.