This space race rom-com doesn’t know what it’s trying to be
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like romantic comedies have been seeing a bit of a revival since Anyone But You last year. Big name stars like Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson certainly haven’t been seen anywhere near the genre in the last ten years. When I saw that they were starring in a rom-com together, I thought ‘Hm, I’ll probably see that,’ then quickly forgot all about Fly Me to the Moon until it arrived in cinemas.
I’ve only recently come to appreciate a good rom-com, and although I’ll nearly always show up for a Scarlett Johansson movie, something about Fly Me to the Moon just wasn’t getting me excited. Looking back on it, I think it was the 1960’s space-race setting. While I don’t think lobbing the term ‘unnecessary’ at a film’s premise is beneficial—especially before even seeing the film—I guess that I was wondering how exactly a rom-com set at NASA pre-Apollo 11 was going to relate to modern-day audiences.
To The Moon and Back
When mischievous ad-woman Kelly Jones (Johansson) is recruited by the government to help ‘sell’ the idea of Apollo 11 to senators and the public, she runs up against Cole Davis (Tatum), director of the Apollo 11 mission, who doesn’t appreciate Kelly interfering with his job. But as the two get closer, and as Apollo 11’s launch date approaches, the government requests Kelly to go behind Cole’s back and film a fake version of the moon landing to air if Apollo 11 goes sideways.
From my description, you’d expect that the whole ‘shoot a fake moon landing’ thing would be the central focus of the movie outside of the primary relationship, but that particular plot point doesn’t rear its head until about halfway through. I only bring it up because it’s something that’s shown in all of the trailers, and without it I’d have nothing good to say about this film.
Let’s get this out of the way: this movie is a mess and has nothing interesting to say about anything. When it’s not focused on the ‘fake moon landing’ storyline, it’s totally lost. I don’t know why filming the fake moon landing wasn’t the bulk of the movie. There’s something to the idea of a borderline absurdist film wherein the main characters take on this totally fictional task.
Indeed, Fly Me to the Moon’s best moments are when Jim Rash is directing and rehearsing the production. He pops on screen with all the sass and verve of his character on Community (honestly though, I think comparing Rash’s character in this movie to how he behaves in the classic Community episode Documentary Filming: Redux—the one where the Dean goes insane filming a commercial for Greendale—is what kept me engaged during these sequences).
Fly Me into the Sun
Rash’s over-the-top character is unfortunately at odds with the total seriousness every other character has for this ludicrous endeavour. Although the words ‘Based on a True Story’ never appear on screen, I guarantee you there will be some people who walk out of this movie thinking that that NASA really did film a fake version of the moon landing. The whole concept should’ve been one big joke, but is instead used as the dramatic lynchpin of the second half of the movie.
Outside of Rash, this movie is terribly unfunny, too. The two romance leads of the movie were in dire need of some dialogue punch-ups or needed to give bigger performances, although I suspect the real issue lies in their totally bland characters. Both Kelly and Cole had interesting enough backstories, but either they weren’t dramatised or were revealed way too late into the movie for me to care.
It made empathising with them a real struggle. I didn’t understand their motivations or have a real idea of their character arcs which, in a rom com where we need to care about and understand how these two characters eventually get together, is a serious flaw. It’s not that Tatum and Johansson lacked chemistry—they’re both very talented actors and I appreciated Kelly’s headstrong attitude running up against Cole’s stony demeanour—but outside the occasional surface-level spark that comes acting talent of this calibre, there’s nothing to encourage an audience to root for their pairing.
Conclusion
Fly Me to the Moon is grossing incredibly poorly, which is really no surprise. This is an incredibly hollow experience, but not even in a way where you can at least shrug it off and say you had a good time watching hot people act silly—as is the case with even some of the worst rom coms.
From an excruciatingly long opening newsreel montage to ‘catch you up’ on the state of NASA in the 1960s, through its meandering first half and the barely-realised potential of the second half, this movie resists recommendation at every turn.
***
Thanks for reading my review. If you liked it, consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien
Comentarios