A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon (2001) - Review

"A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon" is the 2001 documentary written, produced and directed by Bart Sibrel. You can see the film on begging the question. Needless to say, I was not convinced by this film at all.

The film starts off with biblical references, specifically to the story of the Tower of Babel. It then goes on to talk about the Titanic and how the ship sunk on its maiden voyage, a story all people know all too well. The goal here seems to be to paint a dire picture where man attempts some action that is "too hard" and is punished by the Judeo-Xtian god for their hubris. But it, of course, ignores all of the many other achievements that came without such catastrophic results. It instead attempts to plead to the emotions of the viewer in order to set a tone where they'll accept the claims of the story without question.

Why else would the film spend over 20% of its time showing footage completely unrelated to the central claim that the moon landings were faked? Why is the last 5 minutes of a 47 minute video devoted to showing the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination if not to create some sort of guilt by association, given the widely held belief that Kennedy's assassination was a conspiracy? Or spend the first 10 minutes of the film showing failed rocket launches interspersed with scenes of death and destruction from Viet Nam, starving children in Africa and growing unrest in the United States and protests of the war effort?

It's suggested through that this was all a ploy done by the US Government to 1) spread the belief that the United States had caught up with and then surpassed the Soviet Union in space technology, 2) distract the citizens from their anger towards the war movement and 3) to funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of the politicians' cronies in business. But, does this "documentary" prove this?

No. It's not even compelling or even original.

The "documentary" doesn't break any new ground, but instead repeats a lot of debunked claims that supposedly indicate that landing was staged. It uses single sentence audio clips, with no context except for the narrator's suggestions of what supposedly happened, that are supposed to suggest a director staging events. For example, in one clip we're supposed to believe that someone saying "Talk" was a director chastising an astronaut for not hitting his cue.

Other claims are very obviously false or mistaken to the viewer. For example, in one scene where we see an astronaut holding the pole with an American flag on it, we can clearly see the astronaut is turning the pole back and forth for some reason. Yet Sibrel claims that the flag's movement is actually the result of large fans blowing on the "set" in order to keep the "actors" cool. But, if that were the case, then why aren't those fans blowing the "moon dust" around as well?

Or another piece of footage where shadows appear to be coming from different angles, supposedly suggesting multiple light sources (and therefore a staged set and not the surface of the Moon) are more easily explained by (possibly intentional) misinterpretation by Sibrel. In one shot we have the shadow of an antenna along side the shadow of an astronaut.

The shadows are not parallel!

So, of course, that means there was a secondary light, doesn't it? And by that we have proof of a sound stage. Right?

No.

Sibrel shows a shot of two telephone poles on Earth casting long shadows as a result of the rising or setting sun. And, yes, those are parallel due to a single light source and the fact that the poles are more or less parallel. But since we can't see the astronaut or the antenna that are the source of the shadow, how do we know they are both parallel? How do we know the antenna wasn't at an angle to the ground? You need to first show that to be the case (the two sources being parallel) before you can look to the shadow's converging and claim it to be an indication of something else.

And it's similarly flawed claims that make up the bulk of the conjecture. Poorly thought out arguments that are more about propping up the beliefs of people who already want to believe the landings were a hoax than being convincing to those with even a modicum of skeptical thinking. All of the breathless suggestions of a cover up and the exaggerated claims of how many people were involved in the Manhattan Project don't make up for the poor logic and lack of thought put into the claims presented here.


Really, I covered a lot of the claims made here when I reviewed way back in episode 35. And I still say that you're better off watching that film, which I rated a buy, than this "documentary". Because, quite frankly, it attempts to present itself as some sort of informed, authoritative investigation of the moon landings. But really it's just a bunch of half truths and presumptions wrapped in an appeal to emotion and to fear that's ultimately a waste of your time.