Stars shine in this fanciful space-age screwball spoof spinning around a faked moon landing
Fly Me to the Moon
Starring Scarlett Johansson & Channing Tatum
Directed by George Berlani
Rated PG
In theaters Friday, July 12
In this space-age screwball comedy-slash-love story, it’s the late 1960s and America is falling behind in the moon race. The Russians have beat us in getting a satellite into orbit, then putting a man into space, and NASA is playing catchup. Can we make it to the moon before the Commies? Enter Madison Avenue spin specialist Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), sent by shifty White House agent Moe Berkis (Woody Harrelson) to drum up support for America’s space program—where Kelly immediately butts heads with NASA’s beleaguered all-American launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum).
That’s the “meet cute” in this comedically farcical yarn with a fictional Hollywood romcom grafted onto real historical drama. Will NASA get the funding it needs—and the public support—to launch a successful moon mission? Will Johansson and Tatum’s characters fall in love? Will we learn about her secretive past, or the reason he didn’t become an astronaut? Will a stray black feline—a universal omen of bad luck—derail everything, like in Disney’s 1965 comedy That Darn Cat?
Yet another layer gets added to the story when Harrelson’s special agent demands that a fake moon landing be staged and filmed for backup in case the real one has a glitch—and Kelly brings in a flamboyant, over-the-top director (Community’s Jim Rash) to make it happen. You’ll also see Ray Romano, but mostly underused in a supporting role as a veteran NASA engineer. Johansson’s real-life hubby, SNL’s Colin Jost, gets a cameo as a moonstruck senator.
As a kid in the 1960s, I was deep into space—wanted to be an astronaut, had toy spaceships and spaceman figures, launched model rockets and knew all about NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, gleaned through copies of Life magazine and TV news. I have to say, the kid in me geeked out at just how closely this movie aligns with the way things really were, or at least seemed to be, down there in Florida at Cape Canaveral. Fly Me to the Moon is a bright blast of nostalgia for anyone who grew up interested in America’s real space race, and how our program had to scramble once the Ruskies got ahead in the game—and what fashions, and hairdos, looked like in the 1960s. In the movie, everything falls under the long shadow of the tragedy of the first Apollo mission in 1967, which resulted in the fiery deaths of three astronauts before it could even get off the ground.
The movie is also a sly nod to how advertising began to creep into everything during that era, including the space program—with breakfast drinks, wristwatches, even kids’ underwear. Kelly knows all about stretching the truth to sell a product, and Cole insists he won’t compromise NASA’s integrity by turning its space program into a flying billboard.
The romance part might not be true, but you’ll be charmed by how it all falls into place with a couple of lead actors who happen to be very easy on the eyes. Director George Berlani brings a wealth of experience as a successful TV writer and producer (Dawson’s Creek, Brothers and Sisters, Riverdale) to his role, basking his stars in a classic-Hollywood retro glow resembling something in vogue when the 1950s song from which the movie takes its title was first on the radio. And meanwhile, the war in Vietnam rages offstage, threatening to take America’s gaze off the heavens.
You probably know how the true part of this story ends, that America (spoiler alert) really did plant our flag on the moon, the Vietnam war ended and President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. But the real objects to set your eyes on in Fly Me to the Moon isn’t the moon, but the two stars who soar through this zippy romcom romp that jauntily blurs the lines between fact and fantasy, providing a sparkly romantic grounding to a story that’s otherwise out of this world.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 