By Jake Wilson
FLY ME TO THE MOON ★★
(M) 132 minutes
In my life, I’ve known a few people not generally drawn to conspiracy theories who nonetheless insist the moon landing was faked. How far Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me To the Moon is aimed at those people I’m not sure, but it certainly hasn’t much to offer fans of romantic comedy, despite upholding a tradition of dramatising political and social tensions via the skirmishes between the leads.
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum have zero chemistry in Fly Me to the Moon.
The contrasted pair are Channing Tatum as the straight-arrow NASA scientist Cole Davis, fictionally responsible for overseeing the Apollo 11 mission from the ground, and Scarlett Johansson as the crafty marketing whiz Kelly Jones, brought in from New York to ensure the public stays on board.
Cole is smitten with Kelly from the moment they meet, but also not too keen on having a bossy female on his turf, especially one whose methods tend towards the underhand. But all this is secondary to the bigger picture: secretly, Kelly has been tasked by the US government with arranging a fake moon landing to be broadcast live if the real one goes awry.
On this flank, the film is yet another behind-the-scenes story about showbiz types banding together to fool the rest of us – and you needn’t be any kind of conspiracy theorist to feel this is something Hollywood understands. Kelly recruits a campy director friend (Jim Rash) who’s known as the “Kubrick of commercials”, a set is built in a hangar under Cole’s nose but without his knowledge, debates are had about the best way to simulate the lunar surface, and so on.
Channing Tatum (left) and Ray Romano in Fly Me to the Moon, which looks at the possibility of the moon landing being faked.
It’s all fun to a point, though never as amusing or imaginative as you’d hope (the stand-ins recruited to play the phony astronauts barely qualify as characters, but then the real astronauts don’t either). A broader problem is that Kelly appears to be enjoying herself far more away from the dourly masculine Cole, a war hero and Biblical literalist among other things.
Another problem is that Fly Me to the Moon clearly isn’t about to tell us, even jokingly, that the actual moon landing was nothing but a cynical hoax. How Berlanti and screenwriter Rose Gilroy attempt to resolve this reveals something about a distinctly American brand of doublethink, amounting to the idea that lying and telling the truth are the same thing.
Again, this isn’t entirely without interest – but not enough to make up for the wildly overextended runtime, the consistent visual flatness or the fact Gilroy’s period research appears to have stopped at Mad Men. Johansson and Tatum have zero chemistry, but it isn’t their fault: they’re playing third-hand notions of what the 1960s were like, rather than characters it’s possible to believe in for a moment.
At times the semi-spoofy tone isn’t so far from Jerry Seinfeld’s very strange Unfrosted, a mock-heroic account of the invention of the Pop Tart that at least had the courage of its lack of conviction. Johansson isn’t the kind of performer who can be easily embarrassed, but she’s hung out to dry in her big confessional monologue, a scene so corny it would make Frank Capra blush.
Wholly immune to embarrassment is Woody Harrelson, as a sinister Nixon operative who serves as the real behind-the-scenes mastermind, emerging from the shadows periodically to deliver blackmail threats. Speaking in a musical drawl and twirling his palms like a stage magician, he’s at once the nominal villain and the most charming presence in sight, as Berlanti in the end seems fully aware. If you were prone to paranoia, that might get you thinking.
Fly Me to the Moon is released in cinemas on July 11.
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