Is Moon Man actually depressing with the whole 'Earth gets destroyed' plot?

Not nearly as dark as the synopsis sounds. Early on it's revealed that humanity actually survived underground, and the tone stays firmly in goofy, optimistic comedy territory for most of the runtime. The ending does take a big, emotional, bittersweet swing, though, so expect some genuine feelings in the final twenty minutes.

Does anything bad happen to the kangaroo?

King Kong Roo gets into plenty of absurd lunar scrapes alongside Duguyue, and the two of them beat each other up like cartoon characters, but the kangaroo survives the movie.

Is there an English dub, or do kids need to read subtitles?

Most North American digital rentals and streaming versions carry the original Mandarin audio with English subtitles. Because a huge chunk of the movie is one guy alone on the moon fighting a kangaroo, the dialogue load is lighter than a normal comedy, making it an easy starter movie for kids practicing with subtitles.

How does this compare to The Martian for a kid who loves space?

The Martian is grounded in real botany and NASA engineering with dry humor, whereas Moon Man treats physics like a suggestion whenever it needs a joke. Kids who want realistic science should stick to The Martian (just watch out for the couple of F-bombs); kids who want a loud, funny spectacle will have a great time here.

Moon Man – WISE Score & Parent Review | Screenwise

Moon Man

Name: Screenwise
Author: Screenwise

movie2022

76%

WISE Score

6.4

IMDb

A maintenance guy gets accidentally left on the moon, watches an asteroid wreck Earth, and has to survive lunar isolation alongside a furious CGI kangaroo.

6.4/10

93%

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Moon Man

movie

12, 2022

76%

WISE Score

6.4

IMDb

A maintenance guy gets accidentally left on the moon, watches an asteroid wreck Earth, and has to survive lunar isolation alongside a furious CGI kangaroo.

6.4

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6.4/10

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Screenwise Verdict

Think The Martian if Matt Damon were a hopeless, lovestruck maintenance worker and his only companion were a muscular, bad-tempered red kangaroo left behind by the research division. Moon Man (Du Xing Yue Qiu) was a massive box-office juggernaut in China in 2022, adapting a popular South Korean webtoon into a loud, big-hearted, visually slick sci-fi comedy.

The setup looks dark on paper: Duguyue misses the evacuation shuttle and watches a meteorite fragment obliterate Earth from his lunar window. In practice, the movie plays almost everything for laughs before pivoting into a surprisingly earnest crowd-pleaser about human resilience. It is overlong and the tonal shifts between goofy farce and sweeping melodrama give you whiplash, but for a family movie night with tweens who want something huge and different from standard Hollywood superhero fare, it lands.

Age Fit

Sweet spot is 10 and up. Younger kids who can read subtitles fast enough will laugh at the kangaroo brawl, though the apocalyptic premise and two-hour length fit tweens, teens, and adults much better.

WISE Breakdown

Wholesome

Despite the grim setup of a meteorite devastating Earth, this Chinese sci-fi blockbuster plays out as a surprisingly big-hearted, goofy slapstick comedy about loneliness, hope, and human connection.

Imaginative

Combines hard-ish lunar survival mechanics with total cartoon absurdity—most notably the protagonist's adversarial roommate situation with a massive, hot-tempered red kangaroo.

Safe

Common Sense Media pegs it at 11+. There's apocalyptic disaster imagery, constant slapstick physical abuse (mostly delivered by a CGI kangaroo), mild language, and some brief comedic despair where the hero considers giving up before snapping back into survival mode.

Enriching

It is popcorn entertainment first, though the sheer ingenuity of the lunar engineering problems and the emotional core about why people need each other give it more weight than a standard farce.

Parent Info

✓

Why It Might Be Great

High-budget physical comedy that bridges language gaps easily; watching a grown man get repeatedly outsmarted and drop-kicked by a stranded research kangaroo is universally funny for tweens.
Clever survival problem-solving that takes notes from The Martian, forcing the protagonist to MacGyver rovers, solar arrays, and lunar bases to get home.
A surprisingly sweet emotional hook once the movie reveals he isn't as alone as he thinks, shifting the story into an inspiring spectacle for the survivors watching him from underground.

⚠

What to Watch For

Tonal whiplash is the movie's signature move. It swings wildly between broad, Looney Tunes-style slapstick and big, tear-jerker melodrama about sacrifice and global catastrophe.
Existential bleakness in the first act—before the twist kicks in, Duguyue genuinely believes everyone on Earth is dead and briefly contemplates ending his life in humorous, failed ways.
The 122-minute runtime drags in the middle, and kids will need to be comfortable keeping up with subtitles unless you track down an English dub.

Conversation Starters

"If you were stuck on a moon base by yourself, what is the very first thing you would do once you realized the rockets left without you?"
"Why do you think watching Duguyue's ridiculous fails on the livestream mattered so much to the people stuck underground on Earth?"
"How did the movie balance the super sad idea of Earth getting hit by a meteorite with a guy fighting a giant kangaroo?"

Deep Dive

The Martian meets The Truman Show (with a kangaroo)

Western audiences mostly missed Moon Man when it dropped in 2022, despite it pulling in over $460 million globally. Starring Shen Teng and Ma Li—two of China's biggest comedy stars from the Mahua FunAge theater troupe—the film takes a high-concept sci-fi disaster and turns it into a playground for physical comedy.

What the brief synopsis leaves out is the movie's central twist: the asteroid strike didn't wipe out everyone. A fraction of humanity survives in underground bunkers, and their morale is completely shattered. To keep the public from giving up, the surviving space agency hooks up the intact lunar base cameras and broadcasts Duguyue's daily life to the entire planet as an inspirational livestream.

The problem? Duguyue has no idea anyone is watching. He thinks he is the last human alive, so instead of acting like a stoic astronaut hero, he spends his days lounging around, pining over his former commander, and getting into brutal, hilarious turf wars with "King Kong Roo," a forgotten test-subject kangaroo that hits like a heavyweight boxer.

How it plays for kids and tweens

If your kid loved the problem-solving side of Project Hail Mary or The Martian but still laughs at broad physical comedy, this sits right in the middle. The visual effects are genuinely impressive—the lunar landscapes, low-gravity physics, and massive dust storms look like a top-tier Hollywood tentpole.

The biggest friction point for families is the pacing and cultural comedy style. Chinese blockbuster comedies regularly mix broad, wacky humor with sudden, earnest bursts of tragic romance and heroic sacrifice. One minute a guy is being dragged across the moon by a kangaroo sled, and twenty minutes later the score is swelling for a life-or-death spacewalk. If your family is on board for that kind of big, melodramatic swing, it's a blast.