\u201cFly Me to the Moon\u201d lurches wildly from zippy, retro\u00a0rom-com\u00a0to cynical political satire to weighty, remorseful drama and back again.\u00a0Tonally messy and overlong,\u00a0director Greg Berlanti\u2019s film\u00a0ultimately squanders the\u00a0considerable\u00a0charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Johansson\u00a0is\u00a0especially\u00a0charismatic\u00a0here as\u00a0Kelly Jones,\u00a0a late-\u201960s\u00a0ad executive\u00a0who gets plucked from\u00a0a\u00a0Manhattan\u00a0agency\u00a0to sell the space program\u00a0to\u00a0the American\u00a0people.\u00a0She\u2019s Don Draper in a\u00a0pink\u00a0pencil\u00a0skirt\u00a0\u2013 and all\u00a0hail\u00a0costume designer Mary\u00a0Zophres, the longtime Coen\u00a0brothers’ collaborator,\u00a0who has amassed a truly dazzling array of mid-century chic ensembles\u00a0for these actors\u00a0to wear.\u00a0The shadowy government figure who approaches\u00a0Kelly\u00a0in a bar about the gig (Woody Harrelson, playfully menacing in a fedora)\u00a0comments on how useful her beauty is in her line of work. But\u00a0her\u00a0ability\u00a0to read people and figure out\u00a0what makes them tick makes her even more formidable.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watching Kelly\u00a0transform herself\u00a0from one moment to the next\u00a0into whoever she needs\u00a0to be\u00a0to get her way\u00a0provides the primary source of joy in\u00a0Berlanti\u2019s film, based on a screenplay by Rose Gilroy. Is she a compulsive liar? Perhaps.\u00a0But she\u2019s also extremely good at her job.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which is why her supposed romantic connection with Tatum\u2019s launch director Cole Davis makes no sense, beyond the fact that these are both inordinately gorgeous people. Kelly and Cole meet cute\u00a0one night\u00a0in the neon glow of a\u00a0Cocoa Beach, Florida, diner; the next day, they have an awkward moment straight out of \u201cTop Gun\u201d when they realize they\u2019ll be forced to work together. But Cole wants no part\u00a0of\u00a0Kelly\u2019s shenanigans; a brilliant pilot who should have been an astronaut himself, he\u2019s all business, and he remains consumed by the tragedy of Apollo 1\u00a0even as the\u00a0Apollo 11 moon mission\u00a0looms large\u00a0on the horizon. He’s kind of a drag.<\/p>\n
Snappy banter is crucial to this kind of screwball romantic comedy. \u201cFly Me to the Moon\u201d aims for the\u00a0kind of\u00a0sparks\u00a0we\u2019ve enjoyed in\u00a0all those\u00a0Rock Hudson and Doris Day\u00a0classics.\u00a0Here,\u00a0it often feels like Johansson and Tatum are in entirely different movies.\u00a0She\u2019s\u00a0effervescent\u00a0and fearless;\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0stoic and apprehensive. Interestingly, Chris Evans originally was meant to play Cole, and would have been a much better fit, only partly because he and Johansson are longtime friends in real life.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0a lightness\u00a0required\u00a0here that Tatum\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0seem to summon, although that’s also because\u00a0it’s missing on the page.\u00a0And later in the film, when Kelly and Cole sit down to reveal their demons to each other, the movie grinds to a halt for these tedious exposition dumps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cole would be particularly\u00a0irate\u00a0to learn that part of Kelly\u2019s assignment includes hiring a director and actors to fake the moon landing on a soundstage in case the\u00a0real one fails. This, of course, has been a conspiracy theory for decades, including the notion that Stanley Kubrick himself was at the helm \u2013\u00a0the inspiration for a couple of\u00a0flat,\u00a0throwaway jokes here.\u00a0Jim Rash chews up the scenery as a wildly flamboyant but frustrated filmmaker who finally gets\u00a0the\u00a0chance to show\u00a0off his\u00a0artistry,\u00a0even if no one can know about it.\u00a0He definitely knows what movie he\u2019s in\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or at least, what movie this could have been.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cFly Me to the Moon\u201d lurches wildly from zippy, retro\u00a0rom-com\u00a0to cynical political satire to weighty, remorseful drama and back again.\u00a0Tonally messy and overlong,\u00a0director Greg Berlanti\u2019s film\u00a0ultimately squanders the\u00a0considerable\u00a0charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other.\u00a0 Johansson\u00a0is\u00a0especially\u00a0charismatic\u00a0here as\u00a0Kelly Jones,\u00a0a late-\u201960s\u00a0ad executive\u00a0who gets plucked …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[33,39],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy-movies","tag-comedy","tag-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}