Pretty, Weightless
Director Greg Berlanti engineered a rom-com for gay teens, now he’s stumping for space nerds. I say that with love.
Fly Me to the Moon
Director: Greg Berlanti • Writer: Rose Gilroy
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jim Rash, Anna Garcia, Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Hickory, Eclipse, Wilbur
USA • 2hrs 13mins
Opens Hong Kong July 11 • IIA
Grade: B-
Greg Berlanti was once the only guy who made the DC Universe watchable (Arrow, The Flash, Black Lightning). Recently he’s taken a detour into Goofy AF as a producer of screamingly network TV (Riverdale, Found which is bananas) and egalitarian wish fulfilment fluff (Red, White & Royal Blue, All American). As a director, he’s been less active but he gained a lot of traction for his by-the-numbers rom-com Love, Simon, whose by-the-numbers-ness was entirely the point. The gay teen high school rom-com was long overdue, and though it rotted your teeth right out your damn head by association it was so sweet, it’s great it exists and was a modest hit.
So now Berlanti is taking his mainstream, by-the-numbers, TV series pacing instincts back to cinemas with Fly Me to the Moon, a rom-dramedy (progress!) that uses the hoary old conspiracy theory that NASA faked the moon landing in 1969 as its jumping off point, and hitches it onto a nearly chemistry-free romance that, despite shambling on for far too long, has its moments, mostly thanks to an ace cast and stellar visuals. Rose Gilroy’s script is frequently unwieldy – gurl, own it and ask your uncle, writer-producer Tony (Michael Clayton, Andor), or parents, writer Dan (Kong: Skull Island, The Fall) and actor Rene Russo to have a read right quick – but the film is largely a harmless summer confection, just one that’s not as rapid-fire charming as it wants to be. Leads Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum don’t spark on the level of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, but they at least look like they’re enjoying themselves. That helps. So does the space stuff. This is first date material for nerds.
In late 1968 (I think), after advertising pro and life-long con artist (same thing?) Kelly Jones (Johansson) blows away a bunch of stuffy white men with a car campaign to end all car campaigns, she’s headhunted by a shady Nixon administration type, Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson in effortlessly weaselly mode), to head up the fledgling NASA’s communications department. The aim is to make the space race and the moon landing something all Americans get behind at a time when both were suffering crap PR. It’s a rom-com so Kelly clashes with the Apollo 11 Flight Director Cole Davis (Tatum), who doesn’t want some wonk from Manhattan commercialising the mission with Omega watches and popularising Tang. Along the way Berkus comes up with the bright idea to simulcast the Apollo landing from a soundstage down the road in the event the lander crashes and burns – and to ensure the right message is sent out to registered voters. Also along the way Kelly and Cole start gettin’ it on. Again. It’s a rom-com.
The persistent fake moon landing conspiracy is very real, and by the time 1969 rolled around the US was in the grips of a raging counterculture, the Vietnam war grossly unpopular, Americans were demanding space dollars go to real issues at home – and Gene Kranz was NASA’s actual FD. The dramedy part comes in when Kelly starts to buy into her own advertising and learns to genuinely respect the mission, the people working towards it and its symbolic meaning. But Berkus is planning to sabotage the broadcast for the Nixon agenda. Oh no! Will Kelly find a way to make it right for NASA and Cole? That’s a rhetorical question. Don’t answer.
Nothing happens in Fly Me to the Moon that shouldn’t, though it’s so bloated it often raises the question of why the film didn’t lean harder into the game of hearts and minds governments play with Big Projects, or sink its teeth into the commodification of public science. Oh, wait. Rom-com. Right. But if Berlanti or Gilroy or producer Johansson insisted on the fat run time, why couldn’t they find something for Anna Garcia as Kelly’s assistant and conscience Ruby, or engineers Don and Stu (Noah Robbins and Donald Elise Watkins) to do? As an actor, Johansson rides a very fine line between plucky and unlikeable before eventually righting the ship. Tatum is fine, if looking bored with his new, post-“Pony” sexy dad image, so it’s really down to the supporting players to stick the landing. Jim Rash pops as fussy director Lance Vespertine (who Kelly hires instead of Kubrick, an easy joke but a good one), who turns out to be a master of the passive aggressive insult, as does sitcom vet Ray Romano as Cole’s right hand Henry Smalls. He understands the magic of off-handed line-reading and delivers a few of the best. For the second time in as many weeks, a cat, Mischief (played by Hickory, Eclipse and Wilbur), almost steals the show and explodes cat owners’ heads for doing what it was supposed to; there’s no CGI cat.
But man this shit is easy on the eyes and enough of the gags land to entertain. Amid the requisite misunderstandings and wacky highjinks is impeccable mid-century modern production design by Shane Valentino (Nocturnal Animals) and to-die-for costumes by Mary Zophres (La La Land, First Man). It’s all swish mod-ish separates and high-waisted mid-calf pants for Johansson and graphically trimmed men’s mock turtlenecks for Tatum; Harrelson gets a G-man coat that’s distracting in how sharp it is. All of this is sunnily shot by Ridley Scott’s regular shooter Dariusz Wolski doing what we’d call a bird course in university: It’s cinematic enough. I guess Apple wanted to make the most of the leftover props from For All Mankind now that the series has launched itself into the future. — DEK
MOre Space Races
The Right Stuff (1983), d: Philip Kaufman
The GOAT space race movie has a stupid-starry cast and earns every second of its almost satiric three hours in what is essentially a NASA biopic.
First Man (2018), d: Damien Chazelle
We can forgive Chazelle for Babylon because his psychological biopic of Neil Armstrong is as emotionally affecting as it is space nerdy.
Hidden Figures (2016), d: Theodore Melfi
Black women have been saving America for ages, and they finally get some of the props they deserve in Melfi’s drama about three NASA math whizzes.