Review: Fly Me To The Moon

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

There have been so many representations on film of the 1969 moon landing - from the Neil Armstrong biopic "First Man" to that wonderful "Mad Men" episode - that one might one wonder what more needs to be said about it. Greg Berlanti's "Fly Me to the Moon" draws on historical events but is a mostly fictional story set against the backdrop of NASA's plans to launch three men into space.

The film opens with Scarlett Johansson's Kelly Jones, an advertising whiz, trying to land an account through various means of trickery - her rues throughout the film include pretending she's pregnant, putting on a Southern accent, and claiming to attend a college - and drawing the attention of Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), a shady government operative in the Nixon administration.

Berkus enlists Kelly to work at NASA in Cape Canaveral, Florida, claiming that zeal for the mission to the moon is on the decline among the public. He believes that a public relations campaign will drum up excitement once more and, therefore, convince congress to set aside more money for the project.

From the moment she lands in Florida, Kelly runs afoul of Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), the self-serious launch director who was a former Air Force hero and who holds himself responsible for the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts whose mission failed. Kelly wants NASA employees to be on camera and to essentially sell their work to the public, while Cole intends for them to keep their heads down and to just do the work.

"Fly Me to the Moon" is a fun romantic comedy in the vein of an old Doris Day/Rock Hudson picture due to the chemistry between its two leads; Johansson's whirling dervish portrayal of Kelly and Tatum's stiff Cole make for a convincing odd couple. There's also a solid cast of supporting players that includes Harrelson's somewhat scary yet strangely charming government man, Ray Romano's too-trusting right-hand man to Cole, and Jim Rash as a diva director with whom Kelly frequently works.

There have been rumors in the conspiracy world for years that the moon landing was faked and that director Stanley Kubrick was the director-for-hire due to his "2001: A Space Odyssey" breaking ground in terms of special effects the year before. "Fly Me to the Moon" imagines a facade known as Project Artemis, into which Moe enlists Kelly and company, but with the caveat of keeping it a secret from Cole. 

The project involves faking the moon landing on camera, just in case the actual mission of Apollo 11 in July 1969 fails. There's a fair amount of humor to be found in this scenario, from Rash's director's ridiculous demands to a stray black cat that torments the crew, especially during its big moment.

"Fly Me to the Moon" is a film that could be described as light and breezy, but it's more than just a trifle. Much like the best films and TV shows that have covered the moon landing, it captures the awe and delight that the world must have felt at that moment in time. This ground has been trod so many times that it's a genuine surprise that yet another film could succeed in doing so.

And in the tradition of the Day/Hudson rom coms of old, it's filled with witty and well-delivered dialogue as well as solid performances and a clever hook that blends the facts and fictions of this particular period in time. This summer movie season has been a mostly mixed bag so far, but "Fly Me to the Moon" has flown in under the radar as a pleasant surprise.