FLY ME TO THE MOON
2024
Directed by Greg Berlanti
Written by Bill Kirstein, Keenan Flynn, and Rose Gilroy
Fly Me To the Moon is a hard movie to sell, and if I were into subject matter puns, I would declare this ironic, given that much of the movie (at least half) is principally devoted to witnessing Madison Avenue mercenary Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) spending seven months between December 1968 and July 1969 successfully selling a wavering American public, along with their elected representatives, on the incredibly expensive prospect of putting two human beings on the moon while, on the one hand, the country loses a major war in Southeast Asia and, on the other, halfheartedly attempts to institute a lasting and robust welfare state. I've already just indicated, whether you know it or not, why it might have been a hard thing to sell, because if all you had to go on were its marketing campaign, you'd assume that the whole thing were indeed about what it was sold on, Kelly overseeing a big ol' fake moon landing either under the nose of, or in collaboration with, the Apollo mission director, Cole Davis (Channing Tatum). Yes, I daresay it was that unclear; for the record, it's "under the nose." The (obviously extremely fictional, as is Kelly) mission director remains unaware of the subterfuge for nearly all of the movie, while he and Kelly have personality conflicts, learn from one another, and fall in love. In fairness, you at least would've gleaned that last bit from the trailers.
I don't wish to pick on Fly Me to Moon's trailer editors. It's probably what I'd have done in their place, honestly, because while it should probably be easier to summarize its plot than what they managed (I mean, I just did it without trying), it's not really an easy movie to summarize as regards its tone, and I kind of feel as if it's been given somewhat short shrift as a fairly distinctive summertime entry, summarily filed under "failed star vehicle romcom throwback" just because that was the most efficient method of dispensing with a movie it turned out nobody much cared about. (To elaborate on that, it's made a little less than $37 million to date—on a $100 million budget—across a theatrical run that started on July 12th; for my part, I was obliged to go see it at 9:30 in the morning, possibly the earliest I've ever shown up to a movie theater, as this is the one and only screening time that AMC has continued to allot for it, making it transparently obvious that even this was a pure contractual requirement agreed upon with its distributor, Sony. By the numbers, we're looking at one of the most vertigo-inducingly unprofitable movies of the year and even that seems to be invisible: people care so little that it's not even getting, like, The Fall Guy-style "where oh where have the audiences gone?" stories.) So, yes, I suppose it's worth mentioning that I feel pity for the poor thing, and this is probably one reason I like it, and to clarify things early, I in fact like it a whole hell of a lot. Yet I'd almost go so far as to call it legitimately strange, in the lowest-key possible ways, but definitely in mostly good ones.
So that's where we are as far as the very broad genre classification of it goes, and even so, romance is probably only the second (and possibly the third) most important thing that Fly Me To the Moon has on its mind. It feels secretly ambitious, in its agreeably whitebread way; it's grabbing at a whole clutch of parallel ideas, and up to a half dozen other moods, besides just the core genre thing it's got going, of highly attractive movie stars feeling romantic longings against the backdrop of the Space Race. For starters, it hates Richard Nixon much more openly than any other movie about the Apollo Program I've ever seen, though given the paramount theme of the movie—which is so self-evident that one would feel mildly foolish stating it aloud, but it's "the most valuable thing in this world is the truth"—I suppose a vocal disdain for Nixon dovetails in pretty nicely.
Anyway, to give the plot a little more attention, we have Kelly, who even as a hot-shot New York adwoman is still more of a con artist than anything else, and she is shortly dragooned by the Nixon administration's man, "Moe Berkus" (Woody Harrelson), into serving the White House by reigniting the public's love affair with NASA, which has lately largely burned out. This is much to the annoyance of Cole, who oversees a gaggle of exclusively publicity-averse, daylight-shunning super-nerds—I'm going to accept that this movie about truth is itself but a parable, and history is being chucked largely out the window even if its screenwriter, Rose Gilroy, claims significant inspiration from the history of NASA marketing, but the idea that NASA effectively had no public relations prior to 1968 seems like a whopper. Well, even leaving temperament aside, Cole is disgusted by the entire prospect of product tie-ins and fake interviews, and he's disgusted further by the enormous success Kelly has anyway, maybe especially when she bends the truth, even as her success also helps him. At the same time, he's obviously attracted to her—so obviously, in fact, he made a charmingly abortive pass at her before he knew who she was—and it is hard to deny that her methods do work, even if they are not, strictly speaking, correct; accordingly, he has something to learn from her, but ultimately she probably has more to learn from him, for she's at least as impressed with the rigidity of his moral compass and sense of purpose, and how that can inspire people, too, in deeper ways than her hucksterism. However, credit where it's due: it's her idea to broadcast Apollo 11's historic achievement live to all mankind.
Unfortunately, Kelly is prevailed upon to betray him, by ginning up a fake moon landing in case the real one meets disaster—a prospect whose real possibility is emphasized by the long shadow of Apollo 1, which still gnaws upon Cole all these years later—and, backed into a corner by various carrots and sticks, Kelly, her assistant Ruby Martin (Anna Garcia), her "favorite" pretentious hack director Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash), and a bunch of government stooges from another part of the government set up shop in a neglected corner of Cape Canaveral to produce the world's biggest lie. She consoles herself with the thought that it's only just-in-case, a contingency plan. Moe clues her in: the lie is the footage that the world's going to see, no matter what—and that's what'll happen unless she and Cole can figure out how to cheat their way into giving the world the truth.
That development, i.e. The Actual Hook, only arrives surprisingly deep into its 132 minute runtime—I'd aver it's as well-used a 132 minute runtime as you're likely to see, nonetheless—but I'm basically pushing into the middle of the third act here. And maybe that's an error, though it works on behalf of the romance, pushing that back into one-sided (but, for a romcom, remarkably justified) antagonism for as long as possible; and on behalf of what it's doing with a pair of characters that, although they're given a nice rounding, each with their own hefty, load-bearing backstory, are probably better-described as competing worldviews than people, albeit well-rendered worldviews which you could readily confuse with people: Johansson is probably going the most "movie star" here, with, hypothetically, more to do and the lion's share of the plot on her shoulders, which she pursues 60s caper style with a chipper can-do smugness; Tatum, however, is doing more with his extrinsic movie star persona, going about all the way against type—it's worth remembering that his starmaking turn in Magic Mike was predicated on how his himbo archetype was a lot smarter than he looked at first glance, but most of his movies since then have not remembered that (I already mentioned The Lost City), and "NASA mission director" might be the furthest he's ever stretched himself—but he's doing this in an oddly magnetic way, curiously implosive and prickly, and really even borderline-unpleasant, but still by means that wind up making him more charismatic than otherwise, haunted and broody. And hence Johansson in her smart skirtsuits sleekly running circles around this hunk of self-evident self-righteousness, whom costume designer Mary Zophres has apparently insisted will have his wifebeater undershirt visible regardless of what overshirt he's wearing, and Kelly will eventually realize those circles are more like falling into his orbit; I think one could quibble that this could be hotter in some nebulous way, but their turbulent chemistry is delightful, and it's altogether a pretty swell romance on its merits.
And if all of the foregoing makes it sound like a straight drama to you, I'd hazard that you'd be right to think so; and this is where the movie becomes that "kinda weird" I was talking about, and it handles it well, if not always gracefully. It is, after all, at first approximation, a cartoon—it's a movie about faking the faking of the moon landing—and about a third of the time, it's acting like a cartoon. As far as the cast goes, besides Johannson and Tatum, Harrelson is probably riding the line the most successfully, with a whimsically evil skulldugger who still has a hint of menace and seriousness; Rash is committing entirely to a total "comic relief" figure, as a campy arrogant director who favorably compares himself to, obviously, Stanley Kubrick; Colin "Mr. Johansson" Jost gets a cameo that is dumber than the movie has ever been intended to support and falls flat. There's a runner about a black cat that is, ultimately, critical to the plot, but until then is almost never funny; our introduction to Cole is him getting blown up by leaking liquid hydrogen, and he responds to getting blown up like Wile E. Coyote does. And it's also a movie that is direly serious about Apollo 1, so there's maybe some tonal inconsistency here, even before it begins reaching for deep and abiding sincerity about Apollo 11. If anything, director Greg Berlanti's biggest sin is to try to equalize these tones; I'm not even going to say he doesn't succeed, but it may be why Fly Me To the Moon is rarely-to-never actually laugh-out-loud funny despite having ("Channing Tatum and his sidekick Ray Romano stymied by a feline" gags aside) a very high hit rate for jokes that at least make you half-chuckle. But in between the drama and the overt cartoon, there's also snide satire and genuine social commentary and a profound sense of wonder and the caper thrills and some noticeable finger-wagging about believing the moon landing was faked. I'm being earnest when I say that maybe wilding out with this stuff should have been Berlanti's avowed goal.
It is, in any case, a lot for Berlanti to bite off; a consummate journeyman, his most notable career success has been being one of the architects of the Arrowverse. (One's mileage may vary. I don't really know much about it, but I've enjoyed The Flash.) Still, I really wouldn't say he's doing it "wrong," and maybe it's even all the way "right": it does give the movie a unique texture. The unifying force, I think, was meant be 60s comedy pastiche, and this is where the movie probably suffers the most wobble: 60s comedy is not known for being underplayed. (The upside is that 60s comedy is very bimodal: either the funniest shit you ever saw or unbearably annoying and endless, so erring on the side of caution and the lightly farcical wasn't the unwisest choice Berlanti and Gilroy could've made with their direction and joke-writing, respectively.) There is a lot of deployment of "60s style," though, and this is fun, kicking off with a very involved scene-setting montage that plays on the graphic art of the 50s and 60s, notably some Ward Kimball-style limited animation, and numerous splitscreens for the more involved montage sequences, rather well-done if a little de rigeur. (It can play at being madcap more than it reaches madcap; meanwhile, the nuts-and-bolts of the Apollo 11 fakery get dumped into a montage, and it's very cute as we follow along with Kelly's team as they scam and steal the real Apollo 11 team's detailed information to make the best forgery they can, but maybe it's why Rash, love him as I do, lets this down a little bit with nothing besides his wacky unspecific parody of "the director," rather than a figure of more, well, Kubrickian gravitas, one more appropriate for attaching a real filmmaking procedural to.)
But that's fitting, really. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, released from his unproductive servitude to Ridley Scott, gets it: the whole thing is, after all, kind of a giant ad, that's making fun of ads, and Wolski's having a grand time offering clean, crisp, glossy-magazine NASA imagery (and doing a creditable job integrating it into stock footage though the stock footage makes the CGI a bit more obvious), and doing that all in service to that central tension; and even the central tension itself is, I'd say, more-or-less a metaphor, or synecdoche, that becomes increasingly non-metaphorical as the film goes on, more-or-less straight-up questioning whether the idealism that drives Cole can survive a world run by the Kellys, or if even something as pure as the moonshot is stained irrevocably by the compromises and lies and the fact it sort of exists as a distraction from much more urgent concerns. It's still an ad in the end, but an ad for—yes, seriously, at least more-or-less—truth, justice, and the American way, which is all the more amusing when the avatar of those things is a communist in all but name, while his romantic nemesis is the herald of the vulgarest capitalism. It's extravagantly corny, but, crucially, it comes off like it means it; it's wrestled with the desperation and darkness long enough, in spite of being a breezy good time in the bargain, that it earns the joyousness it reaches in the end. I feel like I've been reserved in my praise, and maybe that's because I can perceive something even better and sharper that's hiding in the movie as it exists; but it managed something special—I must've gotten choked up a dozen times over the course of the film, even if some of this was Daniel Pemberton's oft-pensive score, which isn't even trying to be "the 60s"—and the actual "worst" things about it are some real piddly bullshit, like its eyebrow-raising insistence that a TP-51D is "exactly like" the plane Cole flew in the Korean War (so when they say he was one of the best-of-the-best pilots, I wonder why they'd waste him on ground attack missions or, if it was actually a TP-51D, chaffeuring VIPs), and I know that's mainly because P-51 replicas are easier to get ahold of than F-86s; though the real thing is when they cut what I'm dead certain was finished footage of a romantic plane ride because the movie was getting a little long, and Beltrani is, like I said, apt to wobble here a bit. But if that's my nitpick, that suggests he's not doing a bad job; and there's something splendid and special going on here, that I wish had found an audience, even if I suspect that audience literally does not exist.
Score: 8/10
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