‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Review: A Rocket’s Red Glare Gives Proof to Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum’s Screen Chemistry
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic Trailers make “Fly Me to the Moon” look cute at best, when in fact it’s quite clever: a smarter-than-it-sounds, space-age sparring match of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day variety, in which the honest-to-a-fault NASA launch director responsible for sending Apollo 11 into orbit (a straight-faced Channing Tatum) goes head-to-head with a mendacious Madison Avenue spin doctor (Scarlett Johansson, delightfully wily).
Set during the first half of 1969, director Greg Berlanti’s high-concept screwball comedy values chemistry over history, bending the facts to suggest a fresh set of stakes for the operation, where romance fuels a rocket to the moon.
For decades, questions have dogged the Apollo 11 project. Who really won the space race? (Neil Armstrong may have been first to step foot on the moon, but the Soviets actually beat America into space.) Did NASA fake the moon landing? (Skeptics still insist it was staged, either by Stanley Kubrick or someone else, for publicity purposes.) Story credit goes to Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein, as screenwriter Rose Gilroy takes these doubts and extrapolates them into what the film itself might call an “alternative version” of events — one that puts authenticity itself on the line.
At the time, NASA’s beleaguered undertaking had a dual significance: It was about both achieving the impossible and beating the Soviet Union in space.
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