Fly Me To The Moon Not The Song, But The Movie - A Review

The best way to fall in love is by faking the moon landing.

🌜🌛 🌕 🌜🌛

The best way to fall in love is by faking the moon landing. 🌜🌛 🌕 🌜🌛

I sneered at the trailer for this film. 

I thought Fly Me To The Moon movie would be another ridiculous romance between two hot white people and would annoy me right out of the movie house. I did not have good feelings, but when the Alamo Drafthouse offered a sneak peek, I dusted myself off, walked inside, and was treated to some moon-based pleasure. I think that sums up a lot of what this movie is. It's about the pleasure of working with people doing something that's never been done before - sending astronauts to the moon. So there is a little bit of romance in this movie, but most of it is watching two people who are great at what they do, struggle to work together.

Channing Tatum plays Cole. He's the launch director and his job is to fulfill John F. Kennedy's promise of sending a "man to the moon" by the end of the 1960s. Unfortunately, Kennedy died in 1963 and NASA is completely underfunded due to Kennedy’s death and the members of the Apollo 1 mission going... up in smoke (can't believe I said that) in a cabin fire in 1967. As a launch director of that mission, this was the worst thing Cole experienced even after flying 52... or was it 64 missions in Korea?

Are these guys hot? I guess they can be hot if you think so.

Scarlett Johansson plays Kelly, a marketing magician who's given a job by an obvious CIA agent Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to move to Florida and bring back the excitement of traveling to the moon. It may be the 60's but Kelly will do anything to get a sale. She's like Don Draper in a dress. Kelly and her assistant (Anna Garcia) roll into the offices of VIMs (Very Important Men), endure the sexism of the day, and prove they know more than the VIMs do using a lot of talk about their wives to convince them to "give them the contract." At least that's what they used to do until Woody Harrelson blows up their spot on their newest contract. Scarlett Johansson may not want to work for the government, but once she's made an offer she can't refuse, she and her assistant take the job and move to Cocoa Beach, Florida. 

Since many character names in this film end up being fake, I'll use the actor names instead. 

Cocoa Beach is a party town. Scarlett's assistant made all the bookings and picked a hotel where people party hard every night. Rather than deal with the noise, Kelly finds Wolfie's Restaurant and goes there to study up on NASA. That's where she runs into Channing Tatum for the first time. There is a little chemistry there. You can feel it. That's when Scarlett accidentally sets her papers on fire. 

Channing tries to tell her, but she blows him off. Scarlett finally notices the fire and throws her alcoholic beverage on it—bad move. While more of the table is burning Channing puts the fire with his cool pilot's jacket. He says he has too much going on being a launch director planning a trip to the moon launch and tries to leave. However, he just can't do it until he runs back inside and tells Scarlett Johansson how beautiful he thinks she is (as if we didn’t know). Naturally, she shows up the next day at NASA and begins to shake up everything Channing's been doing there. That's when I knew this movie was going to be fun. It’s way more workplace comedy than a romance film.

What’s So Fun About Flying To The Moon?

That’s Michael in the middle.

When I was but a wee lad, we had to do one of those book reports on an important person. This happens often on the TV show Bob's Burgers, and Fly Me To The Moon helped me remember when I had a similar project. The important historical person I picked was astronaut Neil Armstrong. Young Michael thought space was so cool. It was the final frontier after all. The 80s was all about science fiction films and TV shows. All three of the original Star Wars movies had come out and were being rerun all the time. We all thought aliens were real and most of us wanted to go to space and meet them. Who better to know if this was possible than the first man to walk on the moon? 

For the report, I came to school dressed in a silver tracksuit. I put aluminum foil on a closed-face motorcycle helmet and added an American Flag sticker on the tracksuit to display my Americanness. I walked around my elementary school all day waiting for my chance to give my report to the class up on the stage in the cafeteria. I wanted to make everyone feel as if I was Neil Armstrong talking to them. It was awesome and I got a A+ for my efforts. It kept me and my mom up all night to make happen, but we did it! Thanks, Mama. 

Should I Go See Fly Me To The Moon?

Absolutely!

This movie strikes a good balance between the factual and fantastic. Much of the romance I expected was pushed to the side. Like all romance movies, Channing and Scarlett spend less time in love and more time in a love/hate bubble. Channing wants to get Scarlett fired, but he can’t override Woody Harrelson and needs Scarlett to sell the moon. Channing runs his space crew hard to get there. Scarlett uses a variety of accents to win over senators for more funding. This is bad for them, but good for us!

Woody Harelson is obsessive in his desire to beat the Soviets to the moon and sets Scarlett on the task of making a fake version of the moon landing. Channing is sad about the lives lost in the first Apollo mission, but the reporters don't care and bring up Apollo 1 after promising not to. Though Scarlett Johansson had to replace all of Channing Tatum’s crew because they suck at interviews, close to the launch the press demanded to speak to the director of Apollo 11.

Through all this workplace damage we still get a surprising amount of diversity in Fly Me To The Moon. If you've seen any movies from the 60's you know all about how they acted like Black people and women didn’t exist. Some people like to think about the “good old days” back when “all men were created equal” as long as they shut up and never made a big deal about anything. Luckily, despite taking place in 60’s America, Fly Me To The Moon surprised me with the sprawl of different people. One of the top NASA engineers working under Channing Tatum is Black. The owner of Wolfie's Restaurant, who does a brief conversation on the first pen used in space, is Black. There are women not just on staff at NASA, but sitting in spots in the control room too. While this isn’t Hidden Figures or anything, you can tell diversity was important to director Greg Berlanti (Dawson's Creek, Jack and Bobby, Arrowverse, Riverdale). I pay a lot of attention to things like that. I've gotten to the point where I'll pass if I think a movie has too many white people in it. It feels like the more diverse films need us a lot more.  Apple picked a good movie to shell out 100 million dollars to acquire. 

One of the funniest things to happen in a movie called Fly Me To The Moon is that it doesn't connect with the popular song very much. Originally titled In Other Words, the song was written in 1954 and then made more famous by Frank Sinatra 10 years later. He made his version specifically for the Apollo program. The movie was set in a period where you’d expect to hear it all the time but is only sung badly by one character while he's walking away. If I was directing Fly Me To The Moon movie, my tacky ass would have plastered In Other Words everywhere! It would have been in the title credits, I would have commissioned sad and happy versions of it to play during accompanying scenes, and I would have run a soft Dido-esque cover of Fly Me To The Moon during the credits tackiness be damned.

So yes! Go see this film when it comes out. Take your friends or family with you. I think there's a lot to enjoy in this film and if you want, you can sing In Other Words when you're walking to the car.