Review: Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
While comic, the film's enactment of a "faked" moon landing conspiracy is simply irresponsible
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
Directed by Greg Berlanti
This comedy set in 1969 has a lot going on. Basically, it’s a heavily fictionalized version of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the effort to meet JFK’s 1961 challenge to win the space race. Within that, it depicts a completely fictional effort to stage the moon landing on a television set built by NASA. It’s also a romcom proposing a romance between the characters played by its two stars, a conspiracy theory, and (whether intentional or not) a whitewash of the racism of the late 1960s and of NASA history depicted in 2016’s Oscar-nominated “Hidden Figures.”
Hollywood loves movies about the American space program. The films have spectacle (the thunderous launch, the beautiful views from space), human interest (the manly astronauts, their trembling, miniskirted, beehived wives), character virtues (courage, tenacity, mastery of skills and knowledge), patriotism (the grand civic project, the flag on the moon), and a subject that almost all audiences across the political spectrum like and support. “Fly Me to the Moon” has all these elements; in addition, unlike so many recent space movies from “Gravity” (2013) to “The Martian” (2015) — not to mention action-cum-horror movies like the “Alien” franchise — it depicts success.
But added to these surefire winners, “Fly Me to the Moon” has an added attraction for today’s audiences: a conspiracy-theory plot. Riding on a disproven but still extant fantasy that moon landings didn’t actually succeed but were staged as part of a massive secret effort, the movie entertains a subplot that requires the characters to stage this conspiracy. Led by an advertising executive turned NASA public relations chief named Kelly (Scarlett Johannson), a small crew of secret agents and a swishy ad director (Jim Rash) construct a life-sized moon surface diorama complete with a genuine lunar lander.
The initial purpose of this weird theatrical effort, as proposed by a CIA spook named Moe (Woody Harrelson in a low-effort performance) is to provide television networks with an alternate, successful depiction of a moon landing in case the real mission fails. Eventually the aim is even darker, as Moe insists that the false images be broadcast from NASA even if the real mission succeeds, so that he can better control what the public — and the Soviet Union, losers in the space race — knows.
I suppose that the added frission of the conspiracy subplot was seen as necessary to the script. Like the conspiracy plot depicted in the movie, the conspiracy subplot of the movie is an effort to control the reactions of and heighten the interest for audiences. That it was a bad idea to do this in 2024, when faked video and audio abounds and when conspiracy theories and sheer lies are so prevalent, does not seem to have occurred to the filmmakers. By the same logic, a conspiracy theory might have been inserted in the film “Apollo 13” to make the oxygen tank explosion not a simple accident but a plot by America’s enemies, so that the story would be more interesting. (I’m surprised that hasn’t been done yet.) While this whole fake-the-moon-landing subplot provides for plot complications and much comedy, I feel it’s irresponsible.
As for other historical elements: despite the setting of the film in 1969, there’s no racism depicted in the movie. The issue emerges when Kelly and two NASA engineers — one black, one white, they have provided comic relief throughout the movie — rush to procure a crucial part for the lunar lander’s TV camera. It’s the morning of the launch and the store is closed, so Kelly breaks the shop’s window and they steal a TV to harvest its parts. I almost shit my pants. A black guy looting a TV in Florida?
But nothing comes of it. Cops pull up, but Kelly simply flips her perm and goes to sweet-talk them. The next shot shows the cops leading them back to Cape Canaveral, code 3.
The scene called to mind 2016’s Oscar-nominated film about NASA’s African-American mathematicians, “Hidden Figures.” That fictional film, which depicted the real history behind the first manned space flight, had a scene where the protagonists are pulled over for speeding. Once they convince the white cop they are integral to NASA’s efforts, he leads them to their workplace with lights and siren. Racism was real; it still is; and no conspiracy theory was necessary.
As for the Black actor who appears in the scene in “Fly Me to the Moon,” Donald Elise Watkins, his character is apparently the only African American who works for NASA in 1969. Given the visibility shown in “Hidden Figures” — which was, again, historically accurate — this seems unlikely, as does the absence of any other racial minority.
But this is a comedy, so maybe it doesn’t have to… Reader, it does.
Scarlett Johannson is as good as you’d expect: gorgeous, energetic, and capable (unless voice actors were dubbed) of a variety of southern accents. She’s serious when required, though her late-in-the-movie monologue about her character’s hidden history as a thief and con artist is less than fully convincing.
This whole aspect to the character of Kelly, which is used by Moe to blackmail her into complying with his wishes, is underwritten and are awkwardly dealt with whenever they come up. Meanwhile, the film runs long at over two hours — the version I saw, though I have the feeling it might be cut a little before the July 12 release — with the countdown to the blastoff unnecessarily detailed. The launch goes exactly the same way that space shots are depicted in movies for the last 50 years; we don’t need to see every aspect all over again.
What about Kelly’s counterpart, Channing Tatum as launch director Cole Davis?
Hollywood has a leading man problem, you may have read. According to numerous articles, the shortage of actors who are masculine to Hollywood standards — and hopefully tall, though actors under 5’10” have abounded throughout film history — has worried critics since at least 2013 (“Fifty Shades of Bland: Hollywood’s leading man shortage,” BBC, 15 Nov. 2013). Seeking the successors to Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, Sean Connery and other icons of the 60s and 70s, producers have searched far and wide, only to come up with sensitive men like Timothee Chalamet, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves and the like. Only George Clooney has really achieved the range, requisite handsomeness, and top-billing status of earlier generations.1
As an action star, Channing Tatum has done what was required in movies like “The Lost City” (2022), “Logan Lucky” (2017) and “Jupiter Ascending” (2015). In “Fly Me to the Moon,” he gets a chance to display some range. As NASA flight chief Cole Davis, he has numerous opportunities to be comic, often taken aback by Kelly’s machinations, and also to be heartfelt, as when he snows an anti-science senator whose vote NASA needs. That’s in addition to the character aspects you’d expect from the person managing the Apollo 11 mission from assembly to flight: commanding at times, and Boy Scout-ishly honest and upstanding.
So how successful is he? Because even more than Johansson — a first-class movie star in a role that’s perfecdt for her — his character is the linchpin of the movie. Not only the moon shot, but the success of the film itself depends on his ability to convince the NASA workers, and the audience, to follow him.
Well, pretty good. But in the same way that Tatum’s attractiveness is limited by his muscularity and, frankly, a short neck, his ability to give nuanced line readings still lacks depth. In this movie he has two or three scenes where sensitivity and depth are required. One is when Johansson’s character confronts him for losing his temper when he’s challenged by a TV journalist about the Apollo 1 disaster that occurred three short years before. Kelly set up this exclusive interview in her unending quest to promote the Apollo program to the public. Up to this point in the film she’s had nothing but success in convincing the nation (and, crucially, the members of Congress who hold the purse strings) that NASA is worthy of support. When Tatum’s character Cole loses it on camera, it’s the first failure for both of them. Because Cole feels responsibility for the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts, Tatum as actor has to show all the mixed feelings that arise in Cole — grief, anger, guilt, heartbreak — while simultaneously feeling that he has let Kelly down by flying off the handle. Granted, Cole’s character itself has depended on his ability to suppress these feelings in order to continue to do his job. But it’s Tatum’s duty, as part of his job, to present them.
So it’s a challenging moment. I’d give Tatum a B here. He clearly knows what’s required, and he gives it a good effort without falling into the temptation to overact. But neither his voice nor his face have quite the flexibility and depth needed to communicate all these feelings. Could Jack Nicholson at the same age as Tatum (43) have done better? Much.
This suggests that Hollywood’s dependence on action movies, combined with the heavily muscled male bodies so prevalent in both media and American culture at large, has not served us well when it comes to the question of fostering leading men to replace the 1970s generation. If all cinema needs is gender-fluid waifs like Chalamet on one hand and hulks like Tatum on the other, then it simply can’t cultivate the combined qualities necessary in a great leading actor.
In the end, “Fly Me to the Moon” is an entertaining summer comedy, worth your time, especially if it’s hot out.
Idris Elba is the Black star who had — still has — the greatest chance of equalling Clooney in stardom and range, but whether Hollywood will let him do so remains to be seen, and the remaining time to do so is growing shorter.