Fly Me to the Moon

Greg Berlanti has had as large an influence on modern television as anyone, serving as creator, developer, writer, or executive producer of more than forty television series, beginning with “Dawson’s Creek” and “Everwood” on The WB and proceeding to include a host of DC comic books series for The CW. Many would be contented or stretched thin from all that small screen success, but Berlanti still feels compelled to direct a new feature film every few years.

Berlanti’s previous and best outing in the director’s chair was 2018’s coming out romantic dramedy Love, Simon. His newest is Fly Me to the Moon, a breezy and watchable throwback that blends the story of the 1960s Space Race with some classical romantic comedy elements.

Not as discordant as that sounds, this $100 million PG-13 production provides a tongue-in-cheek, behind-the-scenes look at the journey to a lunar landing. Despite budget cut and waning enthusiasm amidst the Vietnam War, NASA’s young and socially awkward scientists try to make good on President Kennedy’s promise of a moon landing before the end of the ’60s. Meanwhile, savvy marketing specialist Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) is enlisted by covert presidential aide Moe (Woody Harrelson) to give NASA an image makeover. Kelly lines up promotional partners, casts camera-ready stand-ins for NASA executives, and tries to win over her sincere, skeptical love interest, launch supervisor Cole Davis (Channing Tatum).

With Apollo 11‘s launch date looming, Moe orders Kelly to stage an elaborate moon set to film this epic scientific breakthrough “landing” should the real thing not go as planned.

Everyone’s heard the urban legend that the moon landing was faked, the product of a soundstage and revolutionary 2001: A Space Odyssey director Stanley Kubrick. First-time writer Rose Gilroy, the daughter of actress Rene Russo and writer-director Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler, Roman J. Israel, Esq.), leans into that idea for gentle laughs. It’s a bit like a chaste Down with Love, only set at NASA and with us being asked to believe that Channing Tatum could be a brilliant man of science. It’s not intellectual or cutting-edge stuff, but there is some mild charm to be found in the retro setting and gee-willikers tone.

Johansson, who made her screen debut thirty years ago this month in the family comedy North and will turn 40 later this year, is at ease here, despite having spent over a decade on Marvel superhero movies. Her career has certainly run a gamut since 1994 and you can liken this to some of her past work, from The Nanny Diaries to her Wes Anderson debut last year in Asteroid City. Obviously, Berlanti’s tastes are a far cry from Anderson’s, but the actress has no difficulty adapting and gives this a pretty solid and unobjectionable emotional core as a take-charge woman haunted by a mysterious past.

As usual, you get what you expect from Tatum. If you told me in 2006 that the lead lughead from Step Up would still be starring in major movies nearly twenty years later, I never would have believed you. And yet he has endured, benefitting greatly from lucrative creative partnerships with Steven Soderbergh and the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Tatum supplies about as much star power here as any Xennial could have and his modest chemistry with Johansson is neither surprising nor troubling.

Berlanti relies less on the romcom angle than you expect given the poster design and a premise that sounds like a fake movie you’d see mentioned in a sitcom episode. He seems to take greater delight in the faked moon landing aspect, getting some decent mileage out of Jim Rash as the Tab-addicted divo brought in to direct the secret soundstage spectacle. Harrelson chips in some chuckles as does Ray Romano playing one of the senior NASA chiefs who smokes in secret after having had a heart surgery.

It’s hard to see where the $100 million budget went beyond the big name cast members. The kindred Wag the Dog was made for $15 million in 1997 and the aforementioned Down with Love cost $35 million in 2003. Adjusting those for inflation, you end up with $30 million in today’s money for the former and just under $60 M for the latter. Even with the higher budget, that’d be a solid foundation for this wide summer release. But that was not in the cards. Apple TV+ shelled out $100 million for Fly Me to the Moon back in 2022, when it was intended to skip theaters and premiere on the streaming service. After some positive test screenings, Apple agreed to seek a partner for theatrical release. Sony leapt to the task and thus, what looks like a big summer movie gets to be a big summer movie in some 3,300 theaters.

Sony did not have much success aligning with Apple on last year’s underperforming Napoleon. I’m not sure they can expect to do much better here, with animation holdovers Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 still topping the charts, the acclaimed horror movie Longlegs garnering some interest, and Twisters expected to deliver big next week. I guess if the mindset is that the theatrical release was an afterthought, the box office performance is simply the cherry atop Apple’s proprietary subscription numbers and internal viewing data. Over at Netflix, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F has the feel of a summer hit without so much as even a limited big screen engagement.