Is it too early to name 2024 the 12 months of the rom-com comeback? Films like “Anybody However You” (which, to be truthful, is from 2023), “The Fall Man,” “The Thought of You,” and others all helped pave the runway, however “Fly Me to the Moon” simply may need used this as a launching pad to achieve even larger heights. After a gap credit sequence (which in and of itself has turn into a misplaced artwork recently) units the stage for the house race that may dominate the vast majority of the Fifties and Sixties, we meet Channing Tatum’s NASA director Cole Davis at an early, character-defining second: Whereas testing for the upcoming Apollo launch, an sudden leak of an odorless, colorless, and extremely flammable gasoline sends technicians scurrying for canopy. Everybody besides Cole, that’s, who improvises an outdated methodology of discovering the defective piece of kit so the crew can get again to work … till a a lot bigger fireball proves there is such a factor as being too married to at least one’s work. Fortunately, destiny has exactly the incorrect individual in thoughts to stability out our doggedly intrepid, inflexible, and awfully buttoned-down wannabe astronaut.
Holding up the opposite half of this rom-com with misleading ease is Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Jones, an unmistakably Don Draper-like promoting guru/con-woman with a checkered previous of her personal and a longtime historical past of resorting to underhanded means as a way to efficiently promote her marks on a pitch. Whereas Cole’s easy, trustworthy worldview could be clearly learn from miles away — from orbit, even — Kelly is his precise reverse. Ruthless, intelligent, and intuitive to a fault, her introductory scene equally establishes every part we have to learn about this wildcard. After an early scheme goes awry, she finds herself recruited by Woody Harrelson’s shady authorities official Moe Berkus to assist an underfunded and understaffed NASA “promote the moon” to an more and more disinterested public and penny-pinching political benefactors alike. Her inevitable meet cute with Cole is the primary of many swoon-worthy moments of sparks flying (in each sense of the phrase), artfully setting the tone for a shared arc that tempers its predictability with a scorching chemistry between each stars.
That stated, “Fly Me to the Moon” cannot fairly maintain a seamless transition between the historic drama unfolding as its backdrop and the love story at its coronary heart — one which’s sophisticated when enterprise mixes with pleasure. As they discover themselves at odds over how greatest to maintain NASA’s Apollo program operating and related, the straight-laced, no-nonsense Cole bristles in opposition to Kelly’s shameless (however efficient) technique of advert campaigns, photoshoots, and Tang tie-ins. In an ironic twist, it takes a full hour for this marketing-conscious film to really get to its massive advertising hook: Kelly’s secret (and largely fictional) mission to faux the Moon touchdown, Kubrick-style, as a backup plan. From there, this center act cannot totally mine this backstabbing betrayal for all of the drama it is value, as a substitute coasting on its many different pleasures.
