"Fly Me to the Moon" Review: A Throwback to Simpler Times And Better Movies

In a sea of summer misfires, Greg Berlanti's old-fashioned dramedy is a welcome dose of fun.

July 15, 2024

On July 20, 1969, at 8:47 p.m. UTC, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle landed on the moon. Initially conceived during the Eisenhower Administration, the Apollo program was eventually furthered by President Kennedy, who promised at the beginning of the decade to safely put a man on the moon and return him to Earth, thus winning the “Space Race,” a goal aimed at gaining an edge over the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. After a tragic fire killed the first three astronauts slated to man an Apollo mission in 1967, an estimated 650 million people watched the culmination of technological innovation, scientific ambition, devastating tragedy, and the remarkable ability of old-school American exceptionalism.

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Or, put more simply (and poetically), “One small step for man… one giant leap for mankind.”

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Of course, like anything else, if something is capable of getting exploited, it will, so the last 55 years have overflowed with cockamamie conspiracy theories by intellectual defectives playing at being the smartest guy in the room. Unfortunately, they do such a marvelous job that they've even coaxed Buzz Aldrin, one of the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission, to punch one in the face after a tense confrontation outside of a Beverly Hills hotel in 2002.

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Considering the alarming rise of alt-right nonsense over the last decade, helped tremendously by a certain conservative “politician's" worrisome rise to power and a global pandemic, one cannot be blamed for viewing the trailer for Fly Me to the Moon, a new romantic dramedy set during the Apollo 11 lead-up, and assuming the worst. Would our female lead be a pseudo-feminist tryhard whose desperate attempts to impose her worldview on the audience distract from what could otherwise be a good movie? Would the abundance of plot points overstuff the narrative, leading to muddied waters, limp characterization, and the general feeling that indecisiveness would sink a flick with loads of potential? Would Channing Tatum prove as much of a failure for this movie as the Challenger was for NASA…... too soon?

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After all, studios are more desperate than ever to lure trepidatious audiences into theaters. It’s why trailers are so scattershot, doing less to relay why we should see the movie than throwing anything that could possibly get construed as cool at us in the preview and hoping something sticks out enough to make us spend $192 on a ticket, popcorn, and a Coke. The snap of a car gunning it through a wide right turn, a dose of moon landing conspiracy theory, a hint of romance, Scarlett Johansson throwing a trash can through a storefront window. Something will pull us in, right? Right??

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Well, as it turns out, despite reasonably low expectations, especially since the film was produced and distributed by AppleTV+, which seems hellbent on spending a gazillion dollars on anything to advertise the world’s worst streaming service, that technically is right, though not in the way the studio imagines. It’s not, in fact, a quick glimpse of a car gunning it through a wide turn, a dose of moon landing conspiracy theory, a hint of romance, or Scarlett Johansson throwing a trash can through a storefront window. It’s something much simpler, much more reliable, and much longer-lasting: a movie.

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Not a cinematic exercise, philosophical examination, intellectual exploration, or societal condemnation.

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A movie. Just a motherfucking movie.

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Using art to challenge an audience or comment on the world isn't inherently bad, but times are so turbulent and divisive, overflowing with ideologies, causes, and movements, that every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a camera thinks that every thought in their head needs to be seen and heard. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

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Fly Me to the Moon is none of these things. It’s not an exercise, examination, exploration, or condemnation and isn’t fueled by ideology. It’s gas is a simple love of telling stories and making movies; by running on pure, unleaded affection, it gives us a story that is so far-fetched it would defy belief if not for the fact that, through sensible distrust of the government and its irresistible earnestness, it doesn’t feel far-fetched at all.

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Kelly Jones is a marketing wiz, with no scruples about pulling out all the stops. If she has to fake a pregnancy and bribe secretaries to trick a few smug executives into dipping into their pockets, she’ll do it. But when the Apollo program loses favor with an exhausted American public still reeling from the tragedy of the Apollo 1 disaster and the Soviet Space Race supremacy established by the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the highest office in the land recruits her to revamp NASA’s image and get the nation invested in the great beyond once more.

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However, when she becomes entangled with bull-headed mission director Cole Davis and learns that Apollo 11’s prospects seem too dim to her government overlords, she gets asked to throw together a fake broadcast of the moon landing. With her romance with Cole heating up, will she choose love and lunar landings or… fake love and lunar landings?

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Frankly, there’s no use pondering the question, because you already know the answer, and that’s the beauty of Hollywood’s occasional dip into old-school, nostalgic storytelling. Fly Me to the Moon comes precisely as advertised, unfolds exactly as expected, and thus cannot inspire strong feelings one way or the other.

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Thank God for that.

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It’s simple. It’s warm. It’s funny. It has charm and charisma, even if it doesn’t have as much to spare as it believes. If a critic had a word-count requirement, writing about this movie would challenge them to meet it, but that’s the beauty. Sometimes, the best things in life leave us full of that unquantifiable feeling that doesn’t need further examination. If you’re looking for a couple hours of fun while the nation heads for disaster, see this movie, take it at face value, and let it work its magic.

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Make no mistake: you can nitpick. Kelly is written as though screenwriter Rose Gilroy imagined her as a no-nonsense woman slicing and dicing her way through the nonsensical impediments to a larger goal, but she’s more insistent thanpersistent; that distinction makes her ultimate turn to heroine a little tougher to appreciate. Channing Tatum hit the big time for his looks, and his alarming lack of talent renders Cole’s dramatic moments unconvincing and counterproductive.

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The reveal of Kelly’s true backstory and that the initial tale she spun to Cole about her and her mother making a living as traveling saleswomen was a mischaracterization, unveils a dramatic history of criminal activity and murderous violence that feels wildly out of place. It’s a testament to the film’s occasional inability to temper itself as it explores sweeping romance, political drama, and old-fashioned comedy, sometimes in the same scene.

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But overall, Fly Me to the Moon is a genuine breath of fresh air. In an age of overlong self-indulgence, here’s a movie that mostly tries and succeeds, even though it occasionally falls short. Sure, it’s actually a tad too long, but in its transitions, dialogue, characterization, and spirit, it’s trying to give us something we rarely get on the rare occasion we venture to the theater. It isn’t groundbreaking. It won’t challenge you, open your mind, or alter your perspective on or about anything. For scores of “cinephiles” who demand every movie act as a monument to their boundless egotism, that will prove problematic. However, to anyone whose head isn’t buried neck deep up their own ass, Fly Me to the Moon is the sort of movie we don’t see nearly often enough and rarely appreciate as deserved when we do: easy, breezy, and fun.

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Also, it has a cat. Movies need more cats.