Remember the movie where Scarlett Johansson played this incredibly confident badass who did accents to become different characters and accepted a super-secret government job in order to wipe her mysterious record clean? Yes, that’s the plot of Black Widow—but it’s also, improbably, the plot of Fly Me to the Moon, a romantic comedy posing as a spy movie posing as a thriller posing as an aspirational drama, all at the same time. It has no idea what it wants to be or say, so that it sprinkles some Marvel in there too is as logical as anything else.
In Fly Me to the Moon, Johansson plays Kelly Jones, a brilliant marketing and public relations executive hired by the U.S. government to make NASA, and the space race, interesting to the public. There she meets Cole Davis, played by Channing Tatum. He’s the sweetest, shyest Boy Scout of a genius rocket scientist who ever lived and that the movie ever for a single second makes it seem like these two shouldn’t or wouldn’t be together is just the first of many, many issues.
Kelly is very good at her job and quickly turns the upcoming Apollo 11 mission to the moon into a global event. The fate of a nation is riding on its success so just to be safe, the government (personified by a mysterious Woody Harrelson character) decides to simultaneously film a fake moon landing in case the real one doesn’t work. Kelly is against this, in part because it shows so little faith in Cole and his team, but does it in secret anyway.
Directed by Greg Berlanti (yes, that Greg Berlanti) from a script by Rose Gilroy, Fly Me to the Moon is too ambitious for its own good. At its heart, it wants to focus on the blossoming romance between Cole and Kelly while also making them full, round characters. But there’s also the excitement around Kelly’s marketing of NASA. There’s the intrigue and mystery behind the fake Moon landing. There’s a persistent political angle. A socially conscious, anti-war throughline. And always a constant question about Kelly’s past which keeps being teased. Then, of course, there’s the actual launch of Apollo 11 and the moon landing, all of which is happening simultaneously. Each story has a different tone and attitude and Berlanti can’t for the life of himself blend together. Oh, and if I told you one of the characters was also an accessory to murder would that surprise you? Because it shouldn’t!
The result is a film that feels like a see-saw, constantly moving from one extreme to the other. In one moment, it’ll provide a mild chuckle. In the next, we’ll see a supposedly exciting and rousing split-screen montage. That’ll be followed by a poignant dramatic reveal, then a cute romantic interlude, and on and on. Johansson’s character is the only one who sort of fits here, because to become as successful as she is, Kelly constantly has to adapt to every situation. Tatum’s character, however, is out of place almost every time.
We’re used to seeing the actor as a goof so to see him cast as the smartest man in the room already comes with its share of challenges. Unfortunately, the script rarely meets those by giving him tools to show that off with confidence or authority. As a result, it’s hard to connect with him and to compensate, Cole is often on screen with much simpler, one-note characters played by the likes of Ray Romano, to humanize him and the group to the audience.
And while this mishmash of tones, styles, and performances run into each other over and over, there are occasionally, almost by default, moments of brilliance. A recurring plot point with a black cat pays off in an incredibly satisfying and surprising way. Jim Rash as fake moon landing director Lance Vespertine is having more fun than anyone else in the film and the sequences of the rocket launches are incredibly beautiful.
Nevertheless, Fly Me to the Moon is an absolute mess. That it shares a hint of DNA with Black Widow besides the phrase “starring Scarlett Johansson” is the first clue something is not quite right. And by the end, while things do end up right for the characters, it’s not the same for the audience. We’re left scratching our heads about the absolute madness we just witnessed and what the heck it was all trying to say.
Fly Me to the Moon opens July 12.
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