Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Lassoing the Moon: Film Review of Fly Me to the Moon
★★★☆☆
By Geoff Carter
To be honest, I’m a little tired of movies that reflect reality—mostly because I’m exhausted by today’s reality. It has nothing to do with the quality of the films, but seeing dystopian flicks like Civil War, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Hunger Games, Mad Max: Fury Road, or even classics like Seven Days in May or On the Beach has become a little too close to the bone. Even Idiocracy has become difficult to watch.
So, it’s nice to find a distraction, a movie that helps us forget the crumbling economy, divisive politics, the massive budget cuts, the trade wars, and everything else going on.
Fly Me to the Moon is the perfect antidote for today’s political and social ennui. Combining snappy and intelligent dialogue (reminiscent of The Thin Man movies) with an elegant retro sixties production style, the drama and grandeur of the space race, an irresistible love story, and a weird conspiracy-theory sort of Wag the Dog twist, this film is a blast (pun intended).
Writer Rose Gilroy and director Greg Berlanti lay out a perfect visual exposition of the state of the race to the moon through montage and animation. It bears mentioning here because it sets a raucous and joyous tone for the rest of the movie—especially with the Louis Prima backing soundtrack.
The film opens as a very pregnant Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) pitches an advertising campaign for the Ford Mustang. She wins over the company executives with a mixture of audacity and charm, revealing afterwards to her assistant Ruby (Anna Garcia) that the baby bump is a fake.
Kelly is later approached by Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), a mysterious government employee who coerces her with knowledge of her checkered past to create a marketing campaign to stoke the public’s flagging enthusiasm for the space race. So, left with little choice, Kelly and Ruby head down to beautiful Florida and NASA where she meets the straightlaced Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), the launch director for the Apollo program and his sidekick Henry Smalls (Ray Romano).
Over Davis’s objections, Kelly takes over, starting a NASA product program including Tang (which many boomers will remember from their childhoods), Omega watches (the first watch on the moon), and even Rice Krispies. Part of the fun is that the Omega and Tang bits were taken from actual ads while Rice Krispies and Fruit of the Loom were—like Kelly—stretching the truth.
When Cole tells her that the engineers will not be allowed to be interviewed for the publicity campaign, she hires actors to portray them. In one scene, Cole runs into the actor playing him who informs Cole that he flew sixty combat missions in Korea. When the real Cole informs him that he actually flew fifty-two missions, the double shakes his hand and asks, “How’d I do?”, a question throwing Cole off-balance—as he is through most of his relationship with Kelly.
As the ad campaign takes off (pun intended), and public interest in the space race grew (as happened in real life), Davis realizes that the support will translate into public funding. Working to gain senatorial support for a NASA funding bill, Kelly recruits senators, including a cameo by Colin Jost as an ethically—and sensibility—challenged senator.
A mutual trust grows between Cole and Kelly that—predictably—blossoms into a romance. Just as predictably, Moe Berkus reappears, telling Kelly that there is a new wrinkle in the publicity campaign, sort of a fail-safe to ensure that the Americans will save face should the mission fail. In short, she has to design and stage a fake moon landing—an interesting plot twist that if for no other reason, simultaneously floats and blows holes into a popular conspiracy theory.
Along the way, Cole’s feelings of guilt for the death of the Apollo 1 astronauts and his own disappointment at being washed out of the space program because of a bad heart, contrasted with Kelly’s own difficult—and criminal—childhood elicit the audience’s sympathy—as they are designed to do—without becoming too maudlin.
Between the fun retro-marketing references (great for boomers), inherent drama of the race to the moon (which hopefully stretches beyond the cultural boundaries of the 1960s), Gilroy’s snappy dialogue and Berlanti’s crisp direction, this film is a ton of fun.
The chemistry between Johansson and Tatum is electric and their comic timing is impeccable. Tatum is a great straight man to Johansson’s whirling marketing dervish, whose energy and comedic sensibilities are reminiscent of a young Ginger Rogers. The same charm and verve displayed in Jo Jo Rabbit are evident here.
If anything, Fly Me to the Moon might be a little overambitious, a common occurrence in some of today’s theatrical productions. Some movies are simply half an hour too long. Second-guessing a screenwriter’s or a director’s (or more likely a producer’s) decision to leave in an extra action sequence or insert an extraneous scene that doesn’t advance the plot or reveal character might seem presumptuous, but to me, this stuff just clutters the story and gets in the way of a good movie.
There is a scene in Fly Me to the Moon when the geeky engineers need a part they can only get from the “new” solid-state television. Since there are none on the base, Kelly drives them into town and breaks into an appliance store to steal—and of course gets away with it. The scene teaches us nothing new about Kelly, the NASA boys, and does nothing to advance the plot. It seemed to me that it just cluttered things up.
At any rate, Fly Me to the Moon is kind of what this country needs right now. First of all, we need a break from all the bad news and chaos coming from D.C. and Wall Street. Secondly, it’s nice to look back to a time when Americans felt positive about their country and when everything (like Ford Mustangs and Tang and Omegas) seemed shiny and new. And finally, Fly Me to the Moon is at times a throwback to the screwball comedies and—at times—the sophisticated banter of a Nick and Nora Charles. And it’s got sort of a Mad Men meets Apollo 13 vibe.
Take a couple hours off and have some fun.
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