Scarlett Johansson and a strong supporting cast can’t quite lift this rom-com set during the Space Race.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Who could have guessed that a 2024 Columbia Pictures rom-com set during the Space Race in 1969 might have been inspired by a 1980 claim that the Apollo 11 moon landing was a hoax perpetrated by Hollywood with Walt Disney’s involvement, a screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) and directed by “2001” auteur Stanley Kubrick?
These are strange times, indeed. Directed by Greg Berlanti (“Love, Simon”), who is no Kubrick and is best known for writing superhero adaptations for television, the sort-of likable throwback “Fly Me to the Moon” takes its title from the Bart Howard song popularized by Frank Sinatra in 1964 with an arrangement by Quincy Jones. The film stars Scarlett Johansson as a Manhattan publicist/ad exec/con artist named Kelly Jones, who is hired by “X-Files”-evoking government mole Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to make NASA, its Apollo program and Apollo astronauts America’s darlings.
Kelly moves with her resourceful assistant Ruby (a wonderful Anna Garcia) to Cocoa Beach, Florida (I once saw a bone-rattling liftoff there). At the massive NASA seaside complex with its launch pads and rocket towers, Kelly runs into the also-towering Cole Davis (a slightly robotic Channing Tatum with a haircut that is either too old or too new). Cole is a Korean War pilot and veteran who was cut from the astronaut program because of a heart rhythm issue (symbol alert). He is the team’s launch director, like the Ed Harris character from “Apollo 13.” Cole was also the director when Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were burned to death in their cockpit in 1967.
Scripted by Rose Gilroy, the daughter of actor Rene Russo and screenwriter Dan Gilroy, “Fly Me to the Moon” is a “Mad Men”-adjacent rom-com featuring a rich and semi-realistic background already immortalized in such films and the aforementioned “Apollo 13” (1995), “The Right Stuff” (1983) and “Hidden Figures” (2016) (not to mention the 1977 Mars-landing-faking effort “Capricorn One” with, yes, O.J. Simpson). As the brilliant beauty with a dark past, Johansson, fresh from another period effort, “Asteroid City” (2023), is delightful, playing the comedy beats with rock-star mastery. Tatum, a talented actor, has still not found his definitive role unless you count those “Magic Mike” movies. His Cole is built too much like an NFL tight end to be convincing as a NASA brainiac boss.
In fact, the scene-stealing male in “Fly Me to the Moon” is Academy Award-winner Jim Rash (as a screenwriter for “The Descendants,” 2012), best known for TV’s “Community,” as the ridiculously temperamental and demanding Tab-guzzling director Lance Vespertine, who Kelly hires to shoot the “alternate” version of the moon landing on the orders of Moe (and unbeknownst to Cole).
Also in the fine supporting cast is Ray Romano as a NASA engineer and friend of Cole’s who’s had bypass surgery, is dying for a cigarette, and wants to live to see the project completed.
Although the Beatles are mentioned and the war in Vietnam casts a shadow, along with Ruby’s hatred of President Richard Nixon, “Fly Me to the Moon” uses R&B music by Etta James, Sam Cooke, and Bobby Womack on the soundtrack and fails to mention Doris Day, whose 1960s-era rom-coms with Rock Hudson are an obvious inspiration for the film.
Kelly convinces a reluctant Cole to put a TV camera on the moon to show the world the astronauts live (a Westinghouse camera was aboard Apollo missions, beginning with Apollo 9). FYI: esteemed cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (“Napoleon”) plays the diva-ish DP on the fake landing shoot. Kelly and Cole fly in Cole’s prop fighter plane, another dubious development, to visit the home of a Southern Senator (Joe Chrest) to convince him to fund the mission. Chrest brings gravitas. But Cole’s poetic, Psalms-evoking explanation for the Godliness of the Space Program is hard to swallow.
As a kind of real-life Barbie (check out her outfits and wigs), Kelly remains not quite entirely believable. I figured her “dark past” was just Gilroy’s synonym for poverty. But Johansson and a host of talented supporting actors make shaky “Fly Me to the Moon” a flight worth taking.
‘Fly Me to the Moon’
Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, smoking.
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Anna Garcia
Director: Greg Berlanti
Writer: Rose Gilroy
Running time: 132 minutes
Where to Watch: In theaters July 12
Grade: B-
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