Fly Me to the Moon has a perfect takeoff, but a disastrous landing

Fly Me to the Moon. // Courtesy Apple Films

It’s been too long since we had a romantic comedy that actually hit—one that delivered romantic goods but was also well-written and fun to watch, something that felt like it was actually made for adults. We’ve been in such a drought that hungry audiences have been far too willing to praise weak pretenders to the romcom throne (I’m looking at you, Anyone But You), poorly-plotted messes that mistake bantering hotties for substance.

Fly Me to the Moon comes so close to reminding us what good romantic comedies are that its inability to stick the landing is baffling.

The sparkling chemistry is there. The witty writing is there. Even the delightful supporting characters are there. But somehow, what could easily have been a breezy delight ends up confoundingly overlong, underlit, and well short of greatness, even though the finish line is as bright and bold as a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral. 

In the midst of the space race, public support for NASA and the moon mission is waning. Launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) is putting out literal fires and desperately scraping together resources. Desperate to beat the Soviets, shadowy White House aide Mo Berkus (Woody Harrelson) brings in plucky marketing expert Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) to sell the American public on the moon landing. When Kelly shows up in Florida and starts doing her PR thing, it rubs the by-the-book Cole the wrong way. 

Will they learn to put aside their differences and work together?

Come on, you know they will.

Fly Me to the Moon has equal enthusiasm for screwball comedies (witness: Chekov’s stray black cat, snappy banter and well-timed physical gags) and the story of the moon landing (fans of The Right Stuff and Al Reinert’s For All Mankind will notice a similar sense of wide-eyed wonder and can-do attitude). For the first two-thirds of the movie, this combination generates oodles of charm that Johansson and Tatum have no trouble coasting on. With the exception of the film’s odd technical choices—primarily its egregiously dark lighting and color-grading—it feels like we’re in steady hands.

Fly Me to the Moon. // Courtesy Apple Films

Bizarrely, all that assurance falls apart in a final act that doesn’t know when to cut off.

One might think that once Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, that would be a natural place to wrap things up. Our characters are on earth, after all, their job is done. However, director Greg Berlanti and screenwriters Keenan Flynn, Rose Gilroy and Bill Kirstein drag the proceedings through the astronauts’ return to earth and beyond. The script crams in unnecessary backstory for Johansson’s Kelly, and a lengthy side plot about a potential false moon landing that pad out a ridiculous runtime of over two hours, dragging down the film’s considerable assets in the process.

Fly Me to the Moon’s positives are so clearly telegraphed that its derailment feels like self-sabotage. The correct choices are obvious, yet Berlanti swerves away from them so sharply that it feels intentional. Was all this extra story baggage, this nighttime photography so dark the screen might as well be black, the result of excessive studio notes? I can’t say. I can, however, say that were it not for those glaring missteps, we might have had a new great hope for the future of the rom-com.

As it is, it’s still a small step for man, but one that goes backward rather than forwards.