Is nuance dead in America? I don’t think so, but it is apparently very, very sleepy. Everything is binary these days. The enchiladas you ate were either a gastronomical miracle straight from Saint Martha* or a meal of such blistering incompetence that it will summon Gordon Ramsay to wreak culinary vengeance.

Same goes for movies, naturally. Marvel movies either destroyed cinema and made Martin Scorsese cry, or they single-handedly saved movie theaters from COVID. Hollywood blockbusters are the worst kind of soulless dreck. Independent films are nothing more than cynical devices for pandering. Everything is terrible/everything is awesome.

Sometimes, though, I just want to have a nice time at the movies. Do I want to have my face melted off with precision-engineered stunt work, or be forced to reckon with my culpability as a White male American? Sure, just not every single time. That’s the gift I received from Fly Me to the Moon, a well-made screwball comedy that’s been released in a world mostly devoid of theatrical comedy releases.

Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) is very good at what she does. During 1969, she’s an ad executive in New York City, and she’s well aware that her largely male clients…ah…are inclined to take her less seriously due to the fact that she’s a woman. She deals with the clueless sexism** by knowing how to read people, and how to tweak her sales pitch appropriately. True, there is the fact that sometimes Kelly sounds a little too glib, and there is the fact that she’s got a secret, but she figures everything will be all right as long as she keeps talking.

Unfortunately, Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) knows Kelly’s secret. He’s a shadowy government operative in the employ of one Richard Nixon, and he’s got a job for Kelly. The bad news is that public opinion toward NASA has been falling, particularly since the tragedy of the Apollo 1 mission. The worse news is that the Apollo 11 mission is coming up. You know, the one involving human beings landing on the moon. 

Apollo 11 needs to go off without a hitch, at least, in the perception of the American public. Two things need to happen. The first is that Kelly is sent to sunny Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Her gig is to bring some pizzazz to the upcoming mission, which involves a NASA-related marketing blitz. This irritates launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), an ace pilot and almost-astronaut. He thinks the mission and the sacrifice should speak for itself. Kelly disagrees, but despite that, there’s a kind of heat between them.

The second thing that needs to happen? Well, Moe thinks America needs a win, regardless of reality. He leans on Kelly, hard. What else can she do, but contact her friend, Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash), a skilled filmmaker with an erratic temperament. Kelly and Lance need to fake the moon landing, just in case things go sideways with the real mission. What could possibly go wrong? Only a collision between Kelly’s talent for deception and Cole’s goody-two-shoes nature, a film shoot that cannot be discovered, and a black cat that stubbornly refuses to recognize the reality of the lunar surface. 

If there is one, and only one, thing you take away from Fly Me to the Moon, it’s that director Greg Berlanti thinks the space program is awesome.*** He spends a chunk of time lovingly shooting replicas of Kennedy Space Center, and also got the thumbs-up to shoot portions of a real launch from the real Space Center. On top of that, Berlanti clearly has big respect for the mission of the space program and the Apollo 1 deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee. Berlanti means well, but that sense of reverence means that his romantic comedy/farce, which should move swiftly, frequently slows down. The tones are also at war with each other, where the screwball antics of Kelly slam into Cole’s lingering guilt over Apollo 1. I’m not saying that a film can’t shift tones, I’m just saying when this film does, it feels somewhat awkward. Having said that, when Berlanti’s film works, it works nicely. There are a number of genuinely funny moments that pair well with the more optimistic, 1960s set time period. Speaking of the time period, props must be given to the immaculate production design, sets, and particularly the flawless costuming by Mary Zophres. It comes together to create a handsome and glamorous film.

Rose Gilroy’s screenplay does a nice job of organically showing who the characters are through their behavior. There are a number of reasons for Kelly to shift her behavior to get what she wants, and not the least of them is that she loves putting one over on dopey dudes. Cole sees right through it, and it’s fun (and a nice throwback) to see a major character hugely concerned with honesty and integrity.

For the most part, the cast understands they’re essentially in a farce & adjust their performances accordingly. I had fun with Scarlett Johansson turning in very strong comedic acting. That doesn’t mean she’s going obnoxiously broad. Instead, her Kelly is someone trying very hard to hide a secret, and effectively conceals it with breezy confidence. Johansson has a real flair for comedy, and the tragedy is that she hasn’t done more of them. While I liked Channing Tatum overall, I didn’t think he was quite on Johansson’s level as a scene partner. Part of it is that Tatum, who’s excellent at comedy, isn’t quite so good at this flavor of comedy. He’s someone who knows how to use his physicality effectively, particularly when it’s in service of the good-looking beefy guy being ridiculous. But his Cole is more buttoned-up, and it feels like Tatum is restrained. An actor who is in no way restrained is Jim Rash as Lance, the frustrated artiste making a movie general audiences will never see. Rash goes all the way up to the line of being obnoxiously broad, and as a result, he ends up stealing the whole damn thing.

I have seen the knives come out for Fly Me to the Moon. Among some of the dumber takes are that Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are too old to credibly star in a rom-com, and that it’s a moral failing for a movie to make fun of conspiracy theories when one of the two major political parties has been overrun by conspiratorial beliefs. Getting mad at this film is like screaming at a Labrador Retriever puppy. All it wants is to be fun, and to entertain you. On that score, it shoots for the moon.

*The patron saint of cooks, servers, and housewives. I swear, I’m not kidding.

**Luckily for America, we got that sexism & racism stuff all squared away by 2024. And by “squared away,” I mean, “we’re better at it than ever.”

***And he’s right! Would that money be better spent on social programs? Maybe, but the fact remains that the technological innovations developed for the space program have been a net positive for our way of life. Okay…maybe not Tang. 

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.