A gruff NASA launch commander and sprightly new public relations director butt heads in Fly Me to the Moon, a truly out-there new romantic comedy now playing in Prague cinemas. This breezy, lightweight film coasts along on the charm of leads Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum during its first half, but devolves into utter madness during its jaw-dropping climax.
The sheer lunacy of what Fly Me to the Moon becomes violates all manner of respect for its audience, and crosses boundaries of taste, ethics, and just common sense. Still, it maintains a certain what-were-they-thinking appeal as we watch things get absolutely nuts. More than mild spoilers below.
Fly Me to the Moon stars Tatum as Cole Davis, NASA launch director at Cape Canaveral in charge of the Apollo 11 mission. Johansson is Kelly Jones, a slick New York City advertising manager with a sketchy past recruited by government agent Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to handle marketing of the mission to the moon and maintain public interest to ensure continued NASA financing.
The no-nonsense Davis, haunted by a previous failed mission that resulted in the deaths of astronauts and friends, immediately clashes with the scheming Jones, who goes around him to secure corporate tie-ins and insists the Apollo mission includes a heavy camera to relay footage from the moon landing. No prizes for guessing that the pair develop a romantic attraction despite butting heads at the office.
Of course, there are real people behind many of the events covered in Fly Me to the Moon (Julian Scheer was the PR manager responsible for promoting the Apollo 11 mission, and Davis is an amalgamation of various NASA launch directors), and its kind of a shame that unlike, say, Hidden Figures, we don’t get to learn anything about the real people behind the mission. But that’s at least partially forgiven by some effortlessly charismatic work by Johansson and Tatum that carries the first half of the movie.
Fly Me to the Moon takes a drastic turn during its second half, however, which inexplicably turns into a fake moon landing conspiracy movie. Because Davis’ idea to film the moon landing goes over so well, Berkus insists that they stage the event in a studio, without the knowledge of Davis or others at NASA, so that they have complete control over the footage they send to the airwaves.
This is instantly distasteful stuff; not only is Fly Me to the Moon glossing over the real people and events associated with the mission to the moon, now it’s incorporating material from conspiracy theories as a lark. And unlike something like Capricorn One, it never takes responsibility for any real-world repercussions the staged mission would necessitate.
Beyond that, however, it’s just completely senseless. The plan in Fly Me to the Moon is to send astronauts to the moon, have them think they are capturing footage, but sabotage the camera and replace their live feed with one from the studio. So we have actors on set following the live-broadcast audio of the moon landing, and mimicking the movements of the astronauts. What would happen if something went wrong in the mission, which would be instantly apparent in the audio?
Faking the moon landing in your flighty rom-com might be in poor taste, but it at least makes sense. But both landing on the moon for reals, and faking the landing at the very same time, is so out-there bonkers it causes the movie to self-destruct.
That’s a shame, because there’s a lot to like in Fly Me to the Moon. Director Greg Berlanti (Love, Simon) keeps things running smooth despite a lengthy runtime, and there’s a real affectionate nostalgia in the film’s recreation of rural Florida, 1969. And beyond the two capable leads, there are some fun supporting performances by Ray Romano as a flight engineer and Jim Rash as the commercial director hired to shoot the fake landing.
But that fake landing so dominates the narrative that it’s all most audiences will take away from Fly Me to the Moon. There were multiple opportunities here, to either tell a meaningful real-world story or a fun lightweight one that pays lip service to the actual events by having them unfold in the background. But Fly Me to the Moon flies off the rails with a fictional narrative that feels less grounded than the Jerry Seinfeld pop tart pic Frosted.
