3.5/5
Review by John P. Harvey.
Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson star as a pair least likely to really hit it off, in this romantic comedy woven into the drama of the race to put the first man on the moon. When Cole Davis (Tatum) and Kelly Jones (Johansson) first meet, there’s enough chemistry to start a fire.
But that was before they learned they were going to work together: Cole as the Apollo missions’ launch director, and Kelly as NASA’s new marketing specialist, who won’t take no for an answer.
Cole — careful, truthful, and by the book — knows that NASA’s decreasing funding is the cause of repeated breakdowns in preparation for the Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 launches. And Kelly knows how to change that — by selling the public on the moon. But Kelly’s rule-breaking ways and means don’t sit well with Cole’s principles and reticence. In fact, Cole and Kelly clash in their approaches to everything that matters in life… except that both are doing their utmost to get Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon. Fortunately, Cole and Kelly have Henry Smalls (Ray Romano), a fellow NASA administrator, to play peacemaker.
Is it any wonder that these polar opposites can’t stay out of each other’s hair?
Fly Me to the Moon is obviously a labour of love: both love of the mission itself — as illustrated in the faithfulness with which the film reproduces the historical footage of the Apollo 11 astronauts’ pre-launch walk to their rocket — and love of playing with the rumours that the actual mission footage was created not in outer space or on the moon but in a studio. And it’s playing with this notion that creates much of the film’s humour.
The film poses scenarios distinctly unlikely in reality, but that doesn’t detract from its innate sense of fun. It moves along very nicely, and always with something going on that has a laugh bubbling up. It’s great fun and will renew your sense of wonder at the ingenuity that got us to the moon as early as 1969.