Early on in “Fly Me To The Moon,” there’s a scene where NASA launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) is trying to pinpoint a dangerous gas leak in a laboratory. He waves a broom around to find the odorless, colorless, flammable gas, which bursts into flame when it makes contact with the gas.
It’s the most combustible reaction that viewers will see in “Fly Me To The Moon.”
And that’s not good news for a movie hoping to coast on the charms of its two leads. Tatum and Scarlett Johansson are both good actors (Johansson was stellar in “Asteroid City” last year), but you can see the effort as they labor to conjure up a spark together on screen.
Tatum plays Cole as a humorless alpha nerd, committed to get the Apollo 11 mission off the ground and beat the Russians to the moon. The movie also gives him a bit of a tragic backstory that is constantly and unnecessarily referred back to.
Both the American people and Congress have soured on the space program in 1969, distracted by the war in Vietnam and other turmoil in the country. So a shadowy government official (Woody Harrelson) calls in an unethical marketing whiz, Kelly Jones (Johansson) to sell Apollo 11 to the public, and convince congressmen to loosen the purse strings. (Kelly also has a tragic backstory. Again, why?)
There’s some fun back-and-forth screwball comedy between the buttoned-down Cole and the scheming Kelly, as she makes product placement deals with the astronauts and hires handsome actors to do interviews as the schlubby NASA technicians. He’s stolid and stiff, she’s chirpy and persistent. This part reminded me of recent corporate dramas like “AIR” where the company is the hero, and selling and marketing are presented as being as virtuous and necessary as actually creating and building.
(Photos courtesy of Apple TV+)
The movie takes an odd turn when Harrelson’s character, fearing that Apollo 11 will be a dud, cajoles Kelly to construct a secret, fake lunar landing film set as a backup plan to fool the American people. Jim Rash of “Community” gets a few chuckles playing the tempestuous, Tab-addicted director hired for the shoot.
But as Kelly tries to keep Cole from finding out about the deception, it feels like too much to slather onto a movie that’s also trying to be a romcom, a workplace comedy and a stirring space drama. This is a movie that needed to pick its launch window and go.
Most of it goes out the window in the climax – who could blame small-screen director Greg Berlanti (“You,” “Riverdale”) for taking his chance to dramatize the first manned mission to the moon? But extended scenes of Neil Armstrong romping on the lunar surface pull focus away from the comedic and romantic elements that the movie has been trying to balance up until then, and “Moon” ends up being a wan retread of “Apollo 13” or “First Man.”
It also doesn’t help that so many scenes are visually flat and brightly lit – “Fly Me to the Moon” was originally intended to premiere on Apple TV+, and seems designed to play on an HDR iPhone rather than a movie screen.
Still, you could imagine a Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts pairing or a George Clooney/Sandra Bullock pairing making this work, using their innate appeal to wallpaper over the cracks in “Fly Me To The Moon.” With Tatum/Johansson unfortunately, the rocket doesn’t leave the launch pad.
“Fly Me to the Moon” opens Thursday in theaters. In Madison, it will play at Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, Flix Brewhouse Madison and AMC Fitchburg 18.