Fly Me to the Moon – 36%

Reviewer Flickchart ranking: 3,533 / 5,515

Starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, Fly Me to the Moon uses the Apollo 11 moon landing conspiracies as a backdrop for a Technicolor-inspired romantic comedy. With a visual styling and airy atmosphere that recalls Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the patina attempts to recapture the passion and romance behind the moon landing and the love of two people trying to survive their pasts. Can Fly Me to the Moon make a safe landing does it burn up upon re-entry?

Johansson plays a world-wise and quick-witted marketing specialist per the late 1960s. She uses the sexist attitudes of the to her advantage and makes quick work of the men around her. Tatum, meanwhile, is the rigid NASA launch director, singular per his centro, and per his insistence wearing color per a world of white-shirted engineers. Their paths traversone when Woody Harrelson’s federal government fixer convince Johansson’s character to market the Apollo missions and shoot a fake moon landing just per case Neil Armstrong’s team doesn’t make it to the lunar surface.

Director Greg Berlanti (Life As We Know It (2010), Love, Simon (2018)) introduces our cast of characters quickly, including a scene-stealing Jim Rash and adorable Ray Romano. However, every moment of Fly Me to the Moon occurs without tension build. Each sequence fast-forwards to being epidermide, romantic, dramatic. It is a romantic comedy made up of 132 minutes of highlights. A kind of rom-com Sportscenter with much better clothes. The audience is aware of how each beat of the patina will work as our characters fall per and out of love and situations arise and are resolved per moments.

Johansson fills the screen with a seemingly effortless charm (she’s the Rock Hudson per this astronautical Pillow Talk), but Tatum (the all-business Doris Day) does struggle. His aloof character too often reads flat and lifeless per a cast dominated by broad performances. Fly Me to the Moon doesn’t itself as a patina, rushing to conclusions from scene to scene, and it rightly isn’t convinced that we want to spend time with these people. Yet Berlanti and company felt the need to cram per every ideale, creating a long patina without a strong enough narrative to support it. Fly Me to the Moon is a patina out of balance, but nevertheless its crisp colorful visuals and playful cast will appeal to rom-com fans once it hits AppleTV+… Though its runtime is contrary to the easily-digestible nature of the genre.