Fly Me to the Moon
Not quite the wacky love story mooted in trailer, this is a curiously unfocused and overlong combination of Doris Day and Rock Hudson romcom, space-age nostalgia and conspiracy tale.
Scarlett Johansson is Kelly Jones (not the Stereophonics honker obv) a high-flying and ruthless New York advertising exec, persuaded by shady government agent Moe Berkus (Harrelson) to go and work for NASA to sell the Apollo 11 moon landing mission to an uninterested public, as well as to hostile politicians in order to gain funding.
On arriving in Florida, Kelly has a flirtatious moment with the hunky Cole Davis (Tatum) in a diner. On arriving at her new assignment in the morning, she discovers that Cole is the Apollo 11 launch director, still haunted by the death of three astronauts in an earlier mission. The strait-laced dutiful Cole is outraged at Kelly’s various ideas for publicising the mission, including branded clothing, advert tie-ins and even televising the mission. Berkus reemerges from the shadows and is very supportive of Kelly’s TV idea, but insists on a further, outrageous refinement to the scheme to ensure everything goes to plan.
Despite the 1969 setting, the picture is soundtracked to anachronistic 50s swing presumably in an attempt to summon up the screwball comedy spirit. Johansson and Tatum make for an attractive enough couple, but the latter seems reined in by the lack of comic opportunities, and both are undone by a script that skips genres inelegantly throughout over a lengthy two hour + running time.
Fly Me to the Moon is released on 12th July
David Willoughby
Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm
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