Fly Me to the Moon

With the release of A Quiet Place: Day One last month and now Fly Me to the Moon, cats have been making a major comeback on the big screen (although, in all fairness, were they ever the main characters, save for Harry and Tonto?). In the case of Fly Me to the Moon, Greg Berlanti’s Space Race-set romantic dramedy, the aforementioned cat serves as comedic foil to a dastardly plot to stage the moon landing.

Scarlett Johansson stars as Kelly Jones, a New York-based advertising executive who travels to Florida to help NASA spruce up its public image in preparation for defeating the Soviets in lunar exploration. She’s sent there by the conspiratorially-minded Mo, played by Woody Harrelson. It’s a fitting casting choice considering the erstwhile lefty’s recent descent into an anti-vaxx rabbit hole. Channing Tatum is Cole Davis, the head of Apollo 11 and a man haunted by the dual traumas of the Korean War and the disastrous Apollo 1 mission. City girl Kelly is very much a fish out of water in Florida, as she butts heads with Cole and the pair tease out their love-hate relationship.

With a performance reminiscent of the sassy screwball heroines of Hollywood’s golden age (namely Katharine Hepburn à la Bringing Up Baby or Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve), Johansson is outstanding as Kelly. Her impeccable comic timing is a delight to behold. Tatum, meanwhile, feels unusually austere as Cole. The film could have benefitted from fully embracing traditional romcom dynamics, rather than merely flirting with 60s pastiche. It’s thus distinctly lacking in both consistent comedy and romance; whatever witty lines there may be are reserved entirely for Johansson, who, one feels, is forced to carry the movie on her own. As for the romance, it ultimately feels tacked on. However, Ray Romano, playing mission control lead Harry Smalls, injects some heart into the feature and his ruminations on lost hopes and dreams are genuinely moving.

For a film that plays fast and loose with the facts of Apollo 11, Fly Me to the Moon says much about a patriotic fascination with a celestial body that belongs to no one. Glossy and aesthetically alluring, the image of the movie, much like its imagined fake moon landing, is adept at selling a dream of idealised American exceptionalism. 

Antonia Georgiou

Fly Me to the Moon is released nationwide on 12^th July 2024.

Watch the trailer for Fly Me to the Moon here: