Fly Me to the Moon (2024 | USA | 132 minutes | Greg Berlanti)

As I’m watching Fly Me to the Moon, the new ScarJo/Channing Tatum romcom, I imagined a bunch of hack-ish critics simultaneously thinking of how they’re going to fit “failure to launch” in their reviews. My prophecy was actualized. Still, the movie, while far from perfect, I quite enjoyed, much to my surprise.

Set during the late 1960’s, as the Apollo 11 mission is set to send astronauts to the moon, Fly Me to the Moon tells the story of a Madison Avenue go-getter named Kelly Jones (Scarlet Johansson) who is lured by a mysterious and sketchy stranger who is a fixer for President Nixon (Woody Harrelson) to run PR for NASA in the lead-up to the historic launch. He sees a big public relations win for NASA as a boon for the President and knows enough Kelly’s mysterious past to blackmail her into doing the President’s bidding. Soon, she’s in Florida and Neil Armstrong is appearing in magazine ads for Omega watches.

Along the way, she meets cute with Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), one of the top guys at NASA. Smitten initially but he comes to find Kelly brash and obnoxious, a genuine pain in his ass. He’s put off by her initiative and willingness to go around every directive he issues.

Moe Burkus, the Nixon fixer, soon wants Kelly to stage a fake moon landing on a soundstage so that it can be better scripted for television. It’s a satire of the conspiracy theory that the moon landing was fake and filmed by Stanley Kubrick on a soundstage (true), but a somewhat toothless one.

Having said that, the Apollo program is one of those things that will always fill me with awe when it’s depicted on screen. While Fly Me to the Moon presents a timeline that even the most deranged revisionist historians would disavow, it does capture the enormity of what NASA accomplished.

There are some silly and/or funny scenes, including one with ScarJo’s real-life husband Colin Jost as a US Senator whose vote is needed to continue funding the Apollo program. Jim Rash is also hilarious as filmmaker/diva Lance Vespertine, the director brought in to direct the fake moon landing. I also think Scarlet Johansson is one of film’s great comedic actresses, and she seems to be having a lot of fun here.

The movie works less when it’s dark, particularly with Cole’s backstory of health reasons that keep him out of space and trauma from his role in the tragic Apollo 1 mission.

As a romcom, Fly Me to the Moon is boilerplate and predictable. It does, though, have the advantage of having two of the most physically attractive people alive as its leads. Johansson and Tatum have fine chemistry and Johansson works hard for it to work despite the absurdity of its premise. Somehow, a silly romcom doesn’t get swallowed by the vastness of space.

Ray Romano is pretty funny, too.

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Fly Me to the Moon is in theaters now.