★★
The world changed forever in July 1969. Or maybe not. If you go for this sort of thing. It would seem that an extraordinary number of people still do it, with the conspiracy no less ripe in 2024 – six human moon landings later – than it was fifty-five years ago. Perhaps more so in the age of frenzied and insensitive social media. It is through such cynicism that Fly me to the moon fuels its launch with limited ambition. The film began as a streaming project and will prove circular in that regard. Certainly, there is little more to the earthly here.
When we seek, for example, the aspiration to an era, Fly me to the moon is closer to the small screen styles of Mad Men than to the dramatic weight of Damien Chazelle. First man, against which his Neil Armstrong (Nick Dillenburg) feels comically inadequate. The role is small. Rather, the real star is Scarlett Johansson’s chic and savvy Kelly Jones, a marketing maestro recruited to rejuvenate NASA’s ailing Apollo space program. From Draper’s New York to Kennedy’s Florida, at the request of none other than Richard Nixon. Or, at least, one of his more questionable agents, Woody Harrelson’s Moe Berkus. It’s almost convincing.
The appointment comes much to the chagrin of Channing Tatum’s buttoned-down Cole Davis, whose scarred past haunts a present overseeing the final Apollo mission. Number 11. Yes, the one that will see Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin fly and land on the moon. No one here knows that success awaits us. Across the Pacific, the Soviets are leading the space race so far, with the film largely playing on its sociopolitical ramifications. In reality, the Moon landing has, in this context, less value than the perception that the feat has been accomplished and what that means in the rankings of the world’s superpowers.
Such demands that Kelly, when he’s not charming senators and securing lucrative brand deals for NASA, is overseeing the production of a fake moon landing. A backup, if the legitimate version goes the way of Apollo 1. Since it makes no sense here that the production actually believes the angle – there’s an ironic nod to Kubrick’s conspiracy – it This is where all the last vestiges of gravity are allowed. go into orbit. Except it’s even more damning than that. Even if the payoff gag works – just about – the shift in tone, from goofy bounce to abject betrayal, seems to draw a line under the film’s earlier efforts. The real mission to the Moon, in which we can invest. The banal flippancy and blunt satire are a sell even Kelly would struggle with.
That’s not the only problem here. There is also the question of Johannson’s excellence. Indeed, the gigawatt star’s screen presence throughout the film is so charismatic that everything else, everyone, seems to be missing. It’s as austere as Dorothy’s Kansas in the technicolor of Oz. Tatum, in particular, is missing. Where a script by Rose Gilroy calls for Davis to be strict, Tatum opts for a straitjacket. Greg Berlanti shoots dull cinematography with staid solemnity and against an uninspired soundtrack of familiar ebbs and flows.
Fly me to the moon began life as a TV movie, made for Apple, and moved to cinema thanks to screen positives. In the past, this was a reasonable excuse for low ambition. Not anymore. As delicious as Johansson is, she’s not quite enough to lift this one off the ground, much less to the moon and back.
T.S.