Movie review
How’s this for Faint Praise Indeed: “Fly Me to the Moon” could have been so much better. It isn’t terrible, and there are plenty of moments in it when you can see the movie it’s trying to be, floating around in the solar system somewhere. But ultimately Greg Berlanti’s comedy-ish, set during the 1969 Apollo 11 launch, can’t seem to find its tone, settling in an awkward place between stylish screwball and gentle nostalgia.
None of this is the fault of its stars: The best idea in “Fly Me To the Moon” is the pairing of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, two actors who share an old-school Hollywood glamour and a cutely wry way with a line. She’s Kelly, an advertising hotshot (sort of a perky female Don Draper; this movie’s opening scenes will be familiar to any fan of “Mad Men”) recruited to shore up NASA’s public image; he’s Cole, the dedicated Apollo 11 launch director skeptical of her efforts. There’s an early scene where their eyes meet, in a diner whose dim light has an only-in-the-movies prettiness, and just for a moment it’s magic.
But the movie ultimately gives us no reason to want these two together — other than their gorgeousness, and the fact that this is the sort of movie where they end up together. Kelly, we’ve frequently told, has a mysterious dark past, while Cole’s a heroic straight-arrow sort (even his turtlenecks seem extra-spotless); sure, it’s fantasy and that’s what movies do, but this particular happily-ever-after seems a bit of a stretch. “You’re going to lie?” Cole says to Kelly, incredulously. “It’s called selling,” she tells him.
Meanwhile, Woody Harrelson slinks around as some sort of mysterious White House operative who wants Kelly to stage a fake moon landing in case the real one goes awry (to his credit, Harrelson pulls this off quite nicely, right down to the precisely tilted hat), and Ray Romano gets the thankless role of Cole’s earnest colleague Henry, who understands how Cole is haunted by the deaths of three astronauts on Apollo 1. This real-life tragedy, frequently referenced, casts a shadow over the film, coexisting uneasily with its playful tone. And there’s a cat — why is this summer full of implausible cats in movies? — to whom it strangely does not occur that the moon-landing set conjured up by Kelly and her crew looks exactly like a giant litter box.
Someday, someone will pair up Johansson and Tatum in a better movie. In the meantime, watch this one with low expectations, and dream.