Fly Me to the Moon review: Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum take on the Moon landing

Suicide is possible, but almost everything is purchaseable in America. 
 
While the events that took place on July 20, 1969 might be viewed as a culmination of the technical science and humans’ achievement, it is also possible to consider it the successful hold of the marketing initiative that declared the US as victors in the space race, which presumably proved the benefits of the American brand of the capitalism against the red threat. 
 
But assuming the government didn’t in fact get men to the Moon they would damn well pretend they did. 
 
That’s at least the premise of the snappy newly released film Fly Me to the Moon, a film which is as carefree as it is historically inaccurate with what actually happened with that small, yet monumental leap for man kind. 
 
A clumsy combination of the romantic comedy and the conspiracy thriller, it’s a romanticized replay for a country grounded on the principles of truth… and for a Hollywood that once belonged to the kings of movie-star sovereignty. 
 
Indeed, one may argue that Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are no Doris Day and Rock Hudson, but at least they are a pretty face that will serve as a main cast of the movie with the silkiness and charm that has been aimed by the director and screenwriters to represent Hollywood’s pop-art 60s where stars like Audrey Hepburn, Michael Caine or Cary Grant would lightly waltz through comedies and farces 
 
Johansson, who was the producer of this picture as well, portrays a character of a Madison Avenue marketing specialist turned criminal, Kelly Jones, who has the ability to twist the truth around based on what her client wants. 
 
As soon as we’re introduced to her character, she employs the con-artist tactics in the most delectable way – wearing a fake pregnancy belly to dismantle the sexist assumptions of the arrogant males she’s robing. 
 
She is the lively contrast to Tatum’s dour honest cop Cole Davis who is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launch director of the troubled Apollo 11 mission in Florida. 
 
His operation is trying to seek source of income in period of domestic upheaval and the war in Vietnam, when public interest in the mission to the Moon has waned. 
 
With the space program in need of a PR man, Kelly is recruited by a mysterious governement operative played by the always unpredictable Woody Harrelson to do just that; become NASA’s public relations director and help sell the Moon mission to the public. 
 
Sooner she turns the astronauts into Omega watch-wearing drinkers of Tang who are posed triumphantly behind the red Camaro. 
 
As depicted in the movie, she is also the one who persuaded NASA to transmit the moon expedition live to the people. 
 
”When I’m finished helping these men,” – boasts Kelly – “they are going to be as big as The Beatles”. 
 
Indeed, as written by Rose Gilroy (daughter of Nightcrawler Andor screenwriter Dan) and directed by Greg Berlanti (Love, Simon), the space race appears to be just as commercialized as sneakers (Air), Cheetohs (Flamin’ Hot) or Pop Tarts (Unfrosted), where Fly Me to the Moon seems to be yet another victorious brand. 
 
It is noble to hope that it is also a callow rom-com-within-a-play retelling of history, with a nod to the concept of truth in an industry obsessed with the theories of conspiracies. 
 
It is also a component of the problem – the entire movie appears to be built from fragments of at least six scripts that do not complete the picture. 
 
After the plot has framed Johansson and Tatum as its main on-screen couple, they share just a breezy romantic chemistry, but fail to carry that over to the movie’s comedy timing which it desperately requires. It grinds the gears with shifts in the pace from, caper movie to conspiracy and winding back again. 
 
The actual Moon landing, known as Project Artemis, proves to produce its own funny moments (“We should’ve gotten Kubrick,” swears Kelly at one point), but it additionally halts most of the desired romance. A faster paced film could have worked the various plot lines and themes, but within the borders of Fly Me to the Moon, the film has a lot of problems related to finding a tone that is sufficiently glittering. 
 
It is a pity though because Johansson, for me, is great. Or as she did it in the past year’s Asteroid City, she knows how and when to switch gears from acting in a drama to a comedy with wit and suggesting there is a heinous side to the elegant Edwardian era. 
 
Meanwhile, Tatum seems bored when he is left with the kind of brooding hunk role that does not play to his strength as either a blossoming comedic actor or convincing dramatic leading man; in most scenes, it appears Tatum’s knit turtleneck T-shirts are doing all the emoting. 
 
Through debonair music and entrancing divided screens, Fly Me to the Moon has certain hopes of invoking a little of the glamour from America’s golden period. Unfortunately, Berlanti’s tedious approach and the obscure and bleaky visuals are a nagging constant that this is an Apple Original film in 2024. Again, no fuzzy sparkles to the colors; no flair to the pictures. 
 
The scenes placed before the assembled crowds of Cape Canaveral have little energy to them in contrast to the footage in 2019’s Apollo 11, a documentary that truly captures the feeling of the time. 
 
Given such a sprightly, visually brightly colored concept, it is peculiar – and at times clumsy – how Fly Me to the Moon is as a film, charming some of the time but only half-coherent a good deal of the rest. 
 
Perhaps the most bizarre idea that it fantasizes, which can been seen as a staple of the show, is the notion of an America that works for truth. 
 
Yet, it is an interesting feature of modernity, isn’t it, to make a movie in which an ex-con artist may be saved to help his or her nation and in which anyone can have his or her past blotted out in exchange for a good deal and PR? 
 
Overall it is as good as any other old-school flicks that can help pass the time on a long flight.