Fly Me to the Moon film review — Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson lift rocket-powered romcom

Shortly after 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick made his masterpiece: a faked moon landing, shot on a film set in 1969, and thereafter taken for real. So goes the urban legend, anyway. In our current age of rampant conspiracy theories, the idea that Nasa cooked up the giant leap for mankind can seem harmlessly wacky: quaint enough for a plot point in pin-bright romantic comedy Fly Me to the Moon. 

Reimagining the launch of Apollo 11, the movie involves the star power of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, and many colourful layers of nostalgia, arranged over a gleaming modern core. For that, thank the backers. The film was supported from an early stage by Apple, who seem to have become a Hollywood studio by accident. (The reported price tag was more than $100mn.) A chipper and spotless hymn to technology, you sense it might be the closest thing yet to what the company feels a film should be.

The first fond callback is to the heyday of the American space age. Hippiedom is invisible. Instead, in Florida, Nasa is readying for take-off under straight-arrow launch director Cole Davis (Tatum). Meanwhile, Manhattan plays host to marketing genius Kelly Jones, played by Johansson like Mad Men’s Don Draper reborn in the teetering heels of Marilyn Monroe. 

Like Mad Men, part of the pitch here is the parade of actors in pristine 1960s costume. You don’t need a big screen for that, and indeed, Fly Me to the Moon was first destined for Apple TV+. (Even now, it looks made to showcase the screen resolution of the latest MacBook Pro.) A cinema release was reportedly triggered by dazzled test audiences, a neat coincidence for a film in which Jones is hired to magic up public interest for the mission, to Davis’s high-minded distaste.

Despite them having the simmering hots for each other, a bickering cold war ensues. Another nostalgia button is duly pushed. The whole thing is a tribute to the romcoms of a time before the phrase had been invented, the powder-pink era of Doris Day. The execution is nimble: Johansson larky, Tatum riffing on his dough-ball persona. Still, call it lucky that this kind of prim confection requires no actual sexual chemistry. The spark between the stars suggests only a firm handshake.

Then again, director Greg Berlanti gives them such a workload, how would they have time for more? For all the brisk and frisky bearing, the movie runs well over two hours, the script stuffed with artful winks to endless connections between then and now. Sometimes, the story is about a fractious and divided America; sometimes the eurekas of product placement and live-streaming. Finally, the plot lassos in the Kubrick conspiracy theory, with the great director given a flamboyant proxy. 

But amid the horseplay, the movie also adopts an earnest expression to decry the perils of techno fakery. Which brings us to the Apple of it all. One knowing line looks happily ahead to distant 1984. In a movie about branding, so specific a reference seems telling: that was the year the company ran Ridley Scott’s famous ad in which a coming dystopia was averted only through the Macintosh PC. 

Now, with Nvidia and Microsoft having raced ahead in the AI gold rush, could it be that a nostalgic Apple is once more giving us a warning? After all, on Earth as in the heavens, the future needs to be in the right hands.

★★★☆☆

In UK and US cinemas from July 12