Space, Satire, and Sparks: Fly Me to the Moon Blends History with Humor | Review

MOVIE REVIEWS

Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
Directed by Greg Berlanti

The premise was intriguing: merging the controversial story of the first moon landing with a screwball comedy. Apollo 11 meets George Cukor, with a dash of conspiratorial sauce à la Ken Follett. This mission garnered the enthusiastic participation of Scarlett Johansson, both as an actress and producer, and financial backing from Apple, which invested 100 million dollars. Credit goes more to the courage than the result.

In Fly Me to the Moon, it’s not just NASA rockets that spark, but also the two protagonists, Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson: he is the director of the famous launch that takes Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the moon; she is a marketing genius hired by a fixer for President Nixon (a devilish Woody Harrelson, of course) to revamp the image of the Apollo 11 mission for the public and voters.

On one side is old America, the hardware of a country entrusted to an upright white-collar worker, already a valorous American soldier (“52 times in Korea”), with blunt manners, resolute pecs, an honest heart, and a fanatic devotion to the cause. On the other is the new America, the marketing savvy capable of selling anything to anyone, embodied by the emancipated and bold working girl who intimidates and seduces the man by offering solutions and upgrades: the country’s software.

The ideological and attitudinal contrasts, the verbal skirmishes, are naturally part of the courtship rituals of a classic rom-com, but while Scarlett Johansson is up to the task, Channing Tatum is far from being Cary Grant or even Gregory Peck. Too physical and lacking the charisma to seamlessly transition from action to screwball comedy. If it weren’t for the scenes with Harrelson and, at least in the first part, for Johansson’s exuberant performance, one could dismiss it all as an insurmountable miscasting issue. Instead, there are moments that work despite the lack of chemistry between the two leads, particularly when Fly Me to the Moon forgets it is a romantic comedy and ventures into satire of America’s businesslike and manipulative nature.

The campaigns devised by Johansson’s character to sell the “dream” of the moon to Americans illustrate the workings and allure of the American model better than many manuals. Propaganda and persuasion regulate the workings of American society at various levels, from the housewife convinced to buy a vacuum cleaner to the politician persuaded to vote for moon landing funding. Up to the highest-ranking of the covert persuaders, President Nixon.

In this hierarchy of deception, the alleged staging of the moon landing itself, ordered by the President’s unscrupulous “assistant,” becomes the heart of the story in the second part. As the film elaborates on this, it shows a clear intent, flaunting its artifices while blending fiction and reality. The latter is the late ’60s, recalled like a postcard, with the bright colors of films from that era and impeccable use of hairstyles and clothing.

What Fly Me to the Moon lacks is the ease needed to give itself a more amusing, cynical, biting tone. Instead, it chooses to wallow in sentimental dynamics and dramatic undertones that poorly fit with the initial lightheartedness and satirical register. Moreover, the characters that work best are those from comedy, like Woody Harrelson or Jim Rash. Being fluid and open to genre blending is fine—it explains the choice of director Greg Berlanti, who has experience in both action and comedy—but the risk is ending up neither here nor there, neither brilliant nor serious.

The title is the same as the song written by Bart Howard and popularized by Frank Sinatra. The film uses a cover sung by Raye.

Gianluca Arnone

Cinematografo, July 9, 2024