Fly Me to the Moon
A summer popcorn flick at both it’s best and worst, Fly Me to the Moon stars Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in this film about NASA’s attempt to get the first man on the moon. Johansson plays charming and smart Kelly Jones, an advertiser from New York that has made a living off doing what sales does best, playing off of the expectation of the customer. She’s poached by Woody Harrelson’s Moe Berkus, a shady figure that works for Nixon’s government, to help NASA out in Florida so that America can refocus its attentions and funds back onto the space race. Kelly takes her assistant, played by Anna Garcia, with her, where they meet Tatum’s Cole Davis, the launch coordinator for the Apollo projects. While working with Cole and the three astronauts Kelly is able to get the taps flowing again down in Florida, only for Moe to come to her and tell her that they have to set up a secret shoot so that if anything goes wrong with moon landing, the world and America still think they made it to the moon. The rest of the film ensues, the chaos of trying to get congressional funding, the secrecy of keeping a set under wrap that would reveal America’s treachery, and some type of friendship or relationship between Tatum and Johansson’s characters.
This film has the recipe for success. There are two stellar Hollywood movie stars, set in a period piece around one of the most popular feel good things in the nation, the moon landing. Harrelson as an added foil is fun as he leans into the weirdness of his part. Dariusz Wolski is the cinematographer on the film, and he helps give the shots a clean sleek look. Small stylistic directional choices, like a shot where Tatum is walking across a warehouse floor as the background is a time lapse of the rocket for Apollo 11 being constructed are fun to watch. There’s some good jokes, and the leads are incredibly charismatic. However, a root of the problem is that Tatum and Johansson are fun with every other character but themselves. The chemistry between the two of them is just not where it needs to be. As they butt heads over work as Johansson’s character is pulling away engineers and astronauts for photo shoots and interviews, Tatum’s character is getting more stressed and focused on the launch trying to account for every issue with the looking failure of Apollo 1 hanging over him. These should be sexually driven conflicts where we can’t wait for them to just get out of the work place and talk to each other about anything else, but instead genuinely feel like difficult conflicts to resolve. That is until they go and have a seafood sandwich on the peer and talk about their past while they gaze into each other’s eyes, desperately trying to get the audience to feel some kind of spark.
On top of the lack of chemistry between the leads, the plot is a bloating mess. It wants to touch on the fact that the Vietnam War is going on at the same time, and that almost a decade since JFK announced he wanted to win the space race has passed and there are now other domestic struggles congressmen want to spend their time and money on. It wants to have a fun character like Moe, who takes advantage of the sinister workings of the Nixon government like bugging and listening in on phone calls, but doesn’t want to actually address the privacy concerns that brings. It wants to reference all of these period moments, while taking absolutely no interest in them other than to set the scene of the space race.
The pacing of the film is inconsistent and long. The climax of the film, Apollo 11 taking off and eventually landing on the moon, is spread out over the entirety of the third act. There are potentially four different endings before it finally does end, that at that point, even though it didn’t feel like the plot was resolved I was completely content with watching the credits roll. Clocking over two hours, the film is far too long and needed cuts.
It is entertaining. It is charming. It is long. It has a honestly perplexing plot, why Hollywood decided to make a movie that is half making fun of the allegations that the moon landing was faked while not being a genuine satire confuses me. It has a messy and confused tone. It’s a summer movie at its finest, and maybe with the family and friends and a couple beers it would be more fun, or maybe it should just be watched at home when it eventually comes out on Apple TV.