FLY ME TO THE MOON (2024)
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jim Rash, Anna Garcia, Donald Elise Watkins, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Christian Zuber, Nick Dillenburg, Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Bill Barrett, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Joe Chrest, Colin Jost, Greg Kriek, Art Newkirk, Peter Jacobson, Ashley Kings, Jonathan Orea Lopez, Christian Clemenson and Eva Pilar.
Screenplay by Rose Gilroy.
Directed by Greg Berlanti.
Distributed by Columbia Pictures. 132 minutes. Rated PG-13.
“Fly me to the moon / Let me play among the stars / And let me see what spring is like / On Jupiter and Mars / In other words, hold my hand / In other words, baby, kiss me.”
It would be nice if the romantic comedy Fly Me To the Moon were as simple, frisky and romantic as the song from which it took its title. Honestly, sometimes it does reach those heights, but it has too much going on plot-wise and not enough romance and comedy to keep its story airborne.
That’s a shame, because this is one of very few rom coms which will be widely released this summer. I was hoping that this film would ignite, but that only happens periodically.
Fly Me To the Moon captures a particular place and time in American history – Cape Kennedy, Florida on the eve of the 1969 Apollo 11 launch and man’s first walk on the moon. It has an interesting cast of characters – scientists, astronauts, marketing specialists, shady government agents, far right-wing politicians and egomaniacal Hollywood directors. It’s old-fashioned, and yet it has things to say about modern society as well.
So why does Fly Me To the Moon only sometimes reach lift-off?
Simply put, because they were trying to do too much. Added into the dish like an unnecessary spice is a whole section based on the old conspiracy theory that the moon landing was a fake made on a soundstage – quite possibly by Stanley Kubrick. (I will give Fly Me To the Moon props for a clever Kubrick gag in the middle of the action.)
This not-so-little subplot does not appear in the story until about an hour into the film, and honestly, it’s an unwelcome addition. Not only has the fake space mission storyline been done way too often on film already – from the mostly forgotten but surprisingly good 1970s thriller Capricorn One to more recent films like Moonwalkers, Dark Side of the Moon and others. Hell, it was even a quick sight gag in Minions, which may be proof positive that this story is overdone.
To be quite honest, I think Fly Me To the Moon would have worked better had they simply jettisoned that storyline and had done a straight romance around the NASA launch of Apollo 11. The faking story makes more than one of the main characters look bad on a regular basis. Sure, it does give more ammunition to Woody Harrelson playing the shadowy Nixon operative behind the scheme – and Woody is very funny here – but he was very funny well before this plot thread was introduced. They could have found more for him to do in the original narrative.
Because what Fly Me To the Moon is really about – or at least it was until the storyline took that hard right turn – was the timid romance between two very different types of people who meet working on the leadup to the launch.
The woman is Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), a smart, flirty and somewhat cynical public relations professional who has a sketchy past and some questionable methods. She has been hired by the government to start a buzz on the space program, which is still reeling from the tragic explosion of Apollo 1 a couple of years earlier. She has the hair of an astronaut’s wife, blood red lips and the va-va-voom pants suits and capris of a pin-up girl – all of which she uses to disarm the sexist guys she always has to deal with in business.
The guy is Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), the rather humorless former-aspiring-astronaut and scientist in charge of the mission. You can tell how button-down Cole is because throughout the length of the film he wears the exact same style of shirt – just in different colors. (He also has an odd-modern looking short-but layered haircut which is far from the crew cut which someone in his position would have worn.) You can also tell that he is repressed because the first time he meets Kelly – in a local diner – he acknowledges she is the most attractive woman he has ever seen. Still, he cock-blocks himself, telling her that he can’t get involved with anyone because of bad timing and the importance of his job.
I guess we should look at the elephant in the room here. While Johansson and Tatum are both undoubtedly gorgeous, they have very little chemistry together. This is mostly on Tatum’s side – and it may not even be the actor’s fault, it may just be the role as written. Still, it is a little hard to root for a happy-ever-after for these two.
However, taking a look at the space program at the height of its importance is endlessly fascinating. Had they maintained the view at the actual space landing rather than showing the less interesting attempts to recreate it, Fly Me To the Moon may have been something special. Instead it is a fairly good movie which had the potential to be very good.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 11, 2024.
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