Fly Me to the Moon (2024) * * *

 

Directed by: Greg Berlanti

Starring:  Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Jim Rash, Anna Garcia, Donald Elise Watkins, Noah Robbins

Fly Me to the Moon takes us back to the early days of NASA and the buildup to the moon landing on July 20, 1969 with a twist.  It incorporates the age-old conspiracy theory that the mission was faked, so the stories of the real landing and the fake landing are told simultaneously.  It's not only fun, but the movie does not detract from NASA's incredible accomplishment nor does it shortchange the phony landing created on a soundstage not far from where Apollo 11 was launched.   

The fake mission was proposed to NASA's new publicist Kelly Jones (Johansson) by Moe Berkus (Harrelson), a government bureaucrat who may or may not work directly for President Nixon and ruthlessly blackmails Kelly into working for NASA and then overseeing the staged landing.  Why perform a phony moon landing?  On the off-chance that NASA fails and thus the nation is spared another humiliation for the space program.   The faked footage will be substituted and no one would be any the wiser. 

When we first meet Kelly, she is a marketing whiz who pretends to be pregnant in order to snag a high-profile client.   Once the ruse is discovered, she's fired but then immediately hired by Moe to work for NASA raising needed advertising dollars for the program.  Kelly is a con artist on the run from her past and gleefully accepts working for NASA instead of going to prison.  Kelly butts heads with Apollo 11 launch director Cole Davis (Tatum), a straight-arrow who struggles daily with the loss of the Apollo 1 astronauts and fearlessly leads his team up to launch day.  He isn't made aware of the staged version until a crucial point when Kelly falls for him.  

Also in tow is Lance (Rash), the flamboyantly gay director charged with filming the phony moon sequence on a soundstage built in a remote hangar on Cape Kennedy's property.   Lance treats the actors playing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin disdainfully because they can't seemingly recreate walking on the moon in zero gravity.   He tells another of his actors, "You have a future in show business, not as an actor, but still,"  His complaints about the sets and actors causes Kelly to say, "We should have gotten Kubrick,"  Rash gives us a standout comic performance.   I could've done without the Johansson/Tatum romance, which feels pigeonholed in and perfunctory, but in the way Fly Me to the Moon dovetails history with urban legends, it pulls this off in splendid fashion.