Genre Comedy/Romance/Drama
Cast Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Anna Garcia, Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Jim Rash. Director: Greg Berlanti
RATING: 7.5/10
The brightest stars in director Greg Berlanti’s nimble romantic comedy based around the 1969 moon landing are not the luminous balls of flaming gas that burn fiercely in the night-time sky and twinkle around Earth’s only natural satellite, which Nasa intends to conquer before the Soviets.
The honour is reserved, instead, for the celestial pairing of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who create their own fireworks with a delightfully old-fashioned and chaste courtship reminiscent of duelling sexes in screwball comedies from the 1930s and 1940s.
Heartfelt and witty repartee in Rose Gilroy’s script is the rocket fuel and the two leads ignite when they verbally spar, punctuating their playful gibes with longing glances.
Buttons remain tightly fastened – Tatum is snug in a vest and sweater for most of the picture – and Berlanti makes us wait well into the second hour before lips touch.
Documented historical facts are rolled in glitter and sent into crowd-pleasing orbit with a colourful supporting cast to safely land the one-liners.
Woody Harrelson and Jim Rash are the big bangs.
The former clearly relishes his role as a CIA agent unconcerned with social niceties, who gleefully tells Tatum’s publicity-shy Nasa employee that he’s now the belle of the ball “so why don’t you slip on your tutu and do some dancing”.
Meanwhile, Rash sashays through scenes as a self-absorbed film director with an ego bigger than his resume, who is secretly hired to shoot “an alternate version of the moon landing” with actors on a sound stage in case the camera on Apollo 11 fails to transmit.
Tatum plays launch director Cole Davis, who is tasked with overseeing Nasa’s historic moment, two years after the tragic Apollo 1 cabin fire on his watch.
His stress levels sky-rocket with every interference from flashy New York marketing executive Kelly Jones (Johansson) and her trusty assistant Ruby (Anna Garcia), who have been hired by CIA agent Moe Berkus (Harrelson) to polish Nasa’s public image in the shadow of the Vietnam War.
Cole and Kelly pull in opposite directions but are irresistibly drawn into each other’s orbits.
Fly Me To The Moon doesn’t take one giant leap for rom-comkind but does achieve that winning combination of charm, humour and heartfelt emotion.
From the moment they meet on screen in a diner, Johansson and Tatum sizzle (the former is almost ablaze thanks to a stray candle).
Screenwriter Gilroy has a blast imagining preparations for the bogus moon landing – codenamed Project Artemis here – gleefully adding fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories who believe TV pictures on July 20 1969 were faked.
“It’s called selling. We’re not lying to the customer, we’re changing the way they think,” asserts Johansson’s silver-tongued saleswoman.
Maybe I’m another sucker but I’m sold.
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