Space race rom com! Clap, clap, clap clap clap. Space race rom com! Clap, clap, clap clap clap. That 4 word pitch, with a dose of Channing Tatum and ScarJo, is all Greg Berlanti needed for Fly Me to the Moon. As fun as that pitch is, it’s also reminding you that this film has 2 agendas smashed together, which you feel during this tug of war of a film.
We open watching “Kelly Jones” (Scarlett Johansson) in action, giving a car company a great marketing pitch while wearing a fake pregnancy pad. The pitch doesn’t work, but Kelly’s work, and her shady past, catches the eye of Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson). Moe threatens to expose “Kelly”, but gives her and out to try and help NASA sell the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. Despite the engineering efforts of Henry Smalls (Ray Romano) and Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), they’re horrible at making astronauts palatable to the masses pissed at their large spending with no big results. Oh no, how are the hotshot marketing whiz and the surly hunky engineer going to figure it out ?
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the romcommy parts of Fly Me to the Moon coming. But when you have a couple pros like Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum leading it, you don’t need some big twist to keep your attention. The movie settles into a rhythm of motormouth Kelly always one-upping the uptight Cole. While the movie is set in 1969, it could have been made in the 1930s: as Tatum and Johnansson try to throw a screwball bouncing back and forth with one another. Tatum tries his best, reacting incredulously to each new wrinkle in his day he wasn’t prepared for. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Scarlett Johansson really lead a movie like this…and a great reminder of why she became a big movie star in the first place. ScarJo is the gravity of this movie, completely revolving around her wacky flirty energy she’s harnessed over her career, dominating every scene she’s in.
But this movie is 2 and a half hours because there’s a fake moon landing tale crammed into the romcom. This section of the story sucks more and more Fly Me to the Moon real estate as the movie goes along. The last 40ish minutes have nothing to do with our 2 leads, but instead revolve around a frantic chase around Cape Canaveral featuring supporting players that aren’t really given enough screen time for us to completely invest in them. As a result, the movie feels downright confusing, as you realize, wait, why does this matter right now? There’s some great pratfall, sight gag stuff here and there, but in a ScarJo/Tatum billed film, focusing on the plot that doesn’t use them is straight up confusing.
But at least unMarvelled Scarlett Johansson is back! She’s still got the chops, and I would like to see her lead more projects hopefully in the future. Let’s reunite her and Sofia Coppola next…with a Bill Murray cameo for the Lost in Translation stans out there!