If nothing else, Fly Me to the Moon might be the primary romantic comedy structured round a dispute over federal funding. One hopes it is also the final.
Set in the course of the heyday of NASA’s moon missions, the film tells the story of Cole Davis, a hunky moonshot flight director (Channing Tatum), and Kelly Jones, a Madison Avenue advertising wizard (Scarlett Johansson), who should work collectively to promote the moon touchdown to each the general public and skeptical members of Congress. And, additionally, pretend the moon touchdown, Stanley Kubrick-style, simply in case something goes incorrect.
It is an creative setup with actual potential, and the main duo present loads of movie-star rocket gasoline. However the underwhelming script and scattered story do not ship on the premise. If Fly Me to the Moon have been a mission to house, it will be thought to be a failure to launch.
Though the moon shot is now revered as one of many final moments the place Individuals proved they might do and construct massive issues, the film begins by reminding viewers that in its personal time, it was perceived fairly in a different way—as a wasteful federal program that disadvantaged unusual Individuals of scarce public assets. It was, in different phrases, a traditional big-government boondoggle, or, maybe, a moondoggle.
With this system struggling from lack of public assist and the specter of yanked funding from Washington, a mysterious White Home operative named Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) decides to herald Jones to make use of trendy promoting strategies to enhance public notion of NASA’s mission.
Jones, we’re supposed to grasp, is an ad-world famous person who additionally occurs to be a little bit of a con artist: Once we first encounter her, she’s pitching a brand new muscle automotive advertising plan to a gaggle of middle-aged male automotive executives. Her massive concept? Spotlight the seatbelts, which within the late Sixties have been on the precipice of turning into obligatory, and which could make wives really feel extra snug with a sports activities automotive. (You all the time know you are in for a enjoyable evening on the films when the movie begins with a scene designed to present you heat tingles about federal transportation rules.)
To assist make her case, Jones fakes being pregnant with a man-made child bump. The scene is meant to reveal how intelligent she is—a contemporary profession girl, considering in ways in which male has-beens by no means might—however principally it reveals how dumb the film is. It is tendentious and smug, too cute by half, and it depends on the credulity-straining premise that execs at a nationwide auto model can be completely unaware of the gross sales implications of security options they put in earlier than a regulatory requirement went into place.
Extra probably attention-grabbing is the film’s therapy of President Richard Nixon: Early on, Jones’ assistant proclaims herself a card-carrying feminist who might by no means work for Nixon. However then she proceeds to just do that, and the matter is usually dropped. Fly Me to the Moon cannot determine whether or not it desires to deal with Nixon as a villain or give him some type of props for being the president who presided over NASA’s first profitable manned mission to the moon. A greater movie may need captured some nuance or complication in its portrayal, however Fly Me to the Moon is content material to remain simplistic and shallow.
It does not assist that an hour in, after Kelly and Cole have begun to promote the house program to skeptical members of Congress, the film introduces one other subplot about faking the moon touchdown simply in case something goes incorrect with the true mission. This storyline is dealt with with broad silliness, which makes for a clumsy distinction with the movie’s insistence on the, er, gravity of the lunar mission, and its repeated nods to a trio of astronauts who died on the launchpad as a consequence of security malfunctions. It isn’t unattainable to combine somberness with silliness, however Fly Me to the Moon by no means achieves liftoff with both.
What’s left is a enjoyable idea with interesting leads that, sadly, has been poorly engineered from the bottom up. Johansson and Tatum are charming sufficient that Fly Me to the Moon does not fairly crash and burn. However coming, because it does, in a time by which big-screen romances are in decline, and the style has principally retreated to smaller-scale streaming affairs, it is sufficient to make you are worried: Not less than so far as rom-coms go, possibly Hollywood cannot do massive issues.
