Most critics find Moonraker a well-made, thoroughly silly Bond film, and the praise gathers around the same departments: the production design, the visual effects, especially the space station, and the stuntwork, which several reviews credit with making the preposterous look plausible. Roger Moore’s wise-cracking Bond is generally thought to suit the material, and Jaws and the villain are singled out as likeable turns.
The reservations are about everything else. The plot is called thin, arbitrary and nonsensical, the slapstick fights predictable, and the whole thing a rerun of The Spy Who Loved Me with the gadgets turned up. The spread is wide: The New York Times rates it among the most buoyant entries in the series, while Sight and Sound and The New Yorker see a repetitious formula with Bond reduced to an indestructible cartoon. Later reassessments are kinder than the notices of 1979, generally arguing that the scale and good humour outweigh the daftness.