Aiming for moon, falling way short

Johnson Thomas

Though a fresh romcom genre offering, ‘Fly Me to The Moon’ is not exactly a risible entertainer. The narrative is a bit confused about the tone it needs to stick to. There are bits of comedy, satire, drama and historical critique vying for space in all the chaos leading up to the moon landing and therein lies the malady.

Director Greg Berlanti’s film has A-list stars in Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, but the tonal messiness and character-based scripting doesn’t allow for a smooth integration of elements. That’s not to say that the two stars haven’t done their best to work up some magic.

Johansson is Kelly Jones, a marketing maven who gets transported to NASA to help save the space programme, which includes a voyage to the moon, from fund refusals following public disenchantment with the Vietnam war and the Apollo 1 crash. Kelly is quick to transform herself for what is expected from her, but there is a fly in the ointment in the form of the Apollo II launch director, Cole Davis (Channing Tatum). Rose Gilroy’s screenplay has them at odds and fighting an attraction for each other that straight-laced Davis isn’t comfortable with. So, there’s quite a bit of banter as they put forth their professional positions while still paying heed to the genre they are supposed to be uplifting.

While Kelly sparkles, Davis cold-shoulders — it’s a mix that congeals and one wonders at how they could be romantically linked at all? Maybe, the fact that they are both individually successful and good looking and free, and therefore get paired up… could be the reason. The problem though is that the romance is not sustainable in a setup where their value systems are at loggerheads with each other.

In individual scenes, they are impeccable but together, they are unable to set the screen on fire. Tatum especially seems a little stiff — even though that’s par for the course given the way the characters have been written. As Cole, a gifted pilot who should have been an astronaut, he wants no part of Kelly’s shenanigans.

Moe (Woody Harrelson), the government’s points-person, instructs Kelly to create a moonscape and get in the best director that nobody knows of — in this case, Lance Vespertine — to fake a terrestrial version of the landings that can be shown to the public should the worst case scenario actually occur. The illicit scheme is titled Project Artemis. President Nixon is obviously worried something will go wrong and America will lose face vis-a-vis the USSR.

Kelly is put through the grind via tedious subplots, involving wooing reluctant Senators to get their votes on securing government funds for NASA. With the launch date approaching, it’s soon clear that the contingency plan could end up hoodwinking the American public as the real deal — if Kelly doesn’t find a way to get out of this moral dilemma.

Woody Harrelson is effectively sinister, ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ Ray Romano doesn’t have much to do, and the rest of the supporting players are equally forgettable. The plot is novel, production values amazing, music period-specific, the stars look good. Yet, the film fails to be more than the sum of all parts.