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Fly Me to the Moon Review
Directed By: Greg Berlanti
Written By: Keenan Flynn, Rose Gilroy, and Bill Kirstein
Runtime: 132 minutes
MPA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some strong language, and smoking.
Scarlett Johansson – Kelly Jones
Channing Tatum – Cole Davis
Woody Harrelson – Moe Berkus
Anna Garcia – Ruby Martin
Ray Romano – Henry Smalls
Donald Elise Watkins – Stu Bryce
Noah Robbins – Don Harper
Jim Rash – Lance Vespertine
Peter Jacobson – Chuck Meadows
Christian Clemenson – Walter
Gene Jones – Senator Hopp
Joe Chrest – Senator Vanning
Colin Jost – Senator Cook
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum bring effervescent charm to Greg Berlanti’s new comedy drama, Fly Me to the moon. The high-stakes genre mashup unfolds against the backdrop of the 1960s space race, with NASA desperate to stage the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. While Tatum’s launch director, Cole Davis, feels the unbearable pressure of all sides to win the space race for the United States, he struggles from the guilt of the failed Apollo 1 launch and the tragic deaths of its astronauts.
Meanwhile, hotshot government spook Moe Berkus (Harrelson) hires a sharp advertising executive, Kelly Jones (Johansson), to go to Kennedy Space Center in Florida to take over NASA’s marketing and publicity to fix the organization’s public image. Despite their undeniable sexual tension, Davis and Jones clash over their differing world views. Davis is not one for schmoozing and bending the truth, while Kelley has no qualms about stretching, or outright breaking, the rules if it means NASA keeps its funding and the Apollo 11 mission stays intact.
Things take a turn for the worse when the Nixon White House orders Jones with the unenviable task of staging a fake moon landing, fearing something might go wrong with the mission. The fraudulent moon landing goes against everything Davis stands for. Rather than embracing the popular conspiracy theory of the fake Apollo 11 moon landing, Fly Me to the Moon instead opts to show the moon landing as legitimate, as well as staging a daring heist around it.
Fly Me to the Moon mostly suffers from a flimsy premise and script. It’s a fictionalized account surrounding a well-known historical event. The central players are also fictional characters. Cole Davis never existed or worked as the launch director at NASA. The Apollo 11 launch director was Eugene Francis Kranz. The plot conjures together the characters of Kelly Jones and Moe Berkus, though Kelly Jones’ advertising efforts of selling NASA to the public contain a kernel of truth.
Significant chunks of the movie focus on Cole Davis’ guilt over the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts, and it’s an underwhelming subplot that lacks credulity. It’s never given a proper payoff, but Davis struggles with finding redemption for NASA’s previous losses. Considering Davis is also a pilot and former NASA astronaut hopeful who never made it into the Apollo program, that would have been a far more compelling avenue to explore further, even for a fictionalized NASA astronaut. Multiple scenes and monologues for Cole Davis make it plain to see how Chris Evans was envisioned in the role, but Tatum plays a believable Boy Scout type who is honest to a fault.
Fly Me to the Moon does excel through Johansson and Tatum’s adept chemistry as romantic leads, despite their awkward first-time meetup. Their meetup ends haphazardly. They are both clearly smitten with each other, and Kelly accidentally sets her notebook on fire while she’s distracted by Cole’s handsomeness. The way the scene concludes, with Davis leaving after confessing his attraction to Kelly, lacks narrative elegance. Despite that, Kelly and Cole make a striking, likable pairing.
The fake moon landing subplot creates a solid role for Jim Rash, who portrays a snooty, melodramatic commercial director, Lance Vespertine, hired by Kelly to direct the fraudulent lunar landing. Rash’s comedic charisma is infectious, and he steals every scene he appears in.
Berlanti also brings a slick, sharp directing style to the film’s presentation. Thanks to a $100 million budget and impressive production values, Fly Me to the Moon at least looks immersive and authentic to the period, even though its main characters are not. Berlanti still embraces the wonder and majesty of space travel, despite the cynical approach to marketing the Apollo 11 mission and the creation of a staged moon landing.
Fly Me to the Moon is decently entertaining in its best moments and frustratingly awkward at its worst. The plot sometimes unfolds in a clunky fashion. At 132 minutes, it runs too flabby in the back half, featuring a few scenes that likely should have ended up on the cutting room floor.