Film Review – Fly Me To The Moon (2024)

It was a different world fifty five years ago. Mobile phones? Home computers? What were those? Movies were in colour, but TV hadn’t caught up yet, Vietnam and the Cold War dominated the news, the space race was about to reach its climax and rom-coms were as glossy as ever. In what sounds like an unlikely combination, director Greg Berlanti has brought the last two together in Fly Me To The Moon and fashioned an elegant piece of nostalgia.

It’s 1969 and John F Kennedy’s “we choose to go to the moon” speech is about to become reality. First comes Apollo 10, preparing the way for the actual landing just two months later. With so much at stake, the government decides NASA needs to improve its public image and brings in marketing expert, Kelly (Scarlett Johansson). It’s exactly what launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) doesn’t want, as she sets about upturning all his complex plans with ideas for sponsorship deals and media exposure. But the White House decides the Apollo 11 mission is just too important to fail and orders a fake moon landing as a backup, one that’s almost as complicated as the real thing.

If the combination of romance and putting a man on the moon doesn’t immediately sound likely, Berlanti’s pulled off a master stroke with his choice of leads. Johansson and Tatum have the perfect “will-they-won’t-they?” chemistry, thriving on their top speed banter – Johansson’s in her element with dialogue that could almost have been lifted from a classic screwball comedy – and looking immaculate as only top rom-com stars can. They may have appeared in other films together (Hail, Caesar!), but it’s hard to believe nobody had ever cast them as a romantic couple. This, surely, can’t be the last time.

Using a major event as the springboard for the movie immediately begs the question as to how much we see on the screen is true. Davis, for example, is fictional, but at the start we hear from Woody Harrelson as White House fixer Moe Berkus, who claims he was there at the time – and then sows just the tiniest seed of doubt. Later on, there’s mention of a rumour spreading that the mission was a fake: it gained plenty of traction at the time – my own grandmother included – and it’s never gone away. Let’s just say that the narrative needs to be taken with an unsurprisingly large pinch of salt.

Polished and charming it may be, there are times when Fly Me To The Moon is decidedly off-target. It’s much longer than it needs to be, leaning even more heavily on its stars to see it through, and there’s some heavy handed shifts in tone that simply don’t sit well with the film’s generally light and breezy attitude. Thankfully, though, the laughs land consistently and there’s some enjoyable ing performances, especially from Harrelson with that customary twinkle in his eye. And, yes, it’s true. There’s a cat.

★★★1/2

In UK cinemas from 11 July / Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Jim Rash / Dir: Greg Berlanti / Sony Pictures / 12A