Movies: “Fly Me to the Moon”

Apple’s NASA-themed Apollo 11 movie trashes America putting man on the moon

Greg Berlanti’s, Sony’s and Apple’s Apollo 11 movie trashes America putting man on the moon. It’s a clumsy blend of romance, comedy and historical drama with a modern sensibility. Fly Me to the Moon never takes off. Like the ambiguous, overstuffed Oppenheimer, it implodes.

The movie, directed by Berlanti, co-produced by Scarlett Johansson, who portrays an unethical female publicist, tries too hard at everything and ends up signifying nothing, dismissing the Apollo 11 moon landing—one of man’s greatest achievements—as beside the point. Berlanti, whose Love, Simon delights, either badly misjudges—or lets Apple Originals, Sony Pictures or both mess with—what matters.

Man mastering the ability to make and take flight matters—it’s probably one of the greatest untold stories of our time. The tale of Apollo 11, which Ayn Rand witnessed at launch and described as “sublime,” has never been depicted as a major feature film. Fly Me to the Moon pretends it’s about Apollo 11. It’s not. Instead, by plotting the story of a simultaneous fake production of the moon landing, it’s about those who lie and distort Apollo 11. Johansson is a con woman hired by a shady government bureaucrat (Woody Harrelson). Co-producer Channing Tatum is the pilot and launch leader with whom she becomes romantically involved. Their chemistry is nil.

The whole premise is off. Set up as a “space race,” the consensus term for Soviet Russia’s and the United States of America’s so-called competition to put a man on the moon—a fallacy in my judgment—with a nod to the Vietnam War, the film treats rooting for one of America’s and man’s greatest achievements in flight as an act of faith; belief without evidence.

Berlanti’s trying to add lightness to the potentially fascinating interplay between mastering the chemistry and physics of putting man on the moon and mastering the art of publicity to propel the funding for such an ambitious goal. In this sense, Fly Me to the Moon might’ve been interesting, even good. As it is, the movie feels, looks and sounds utterly artificial.

For example, the sets look fake. With huge NASA logos dominating every other frame, wet, puddled pavements topped by dry, waterless cars (including the Tatum character’s convertible) in rainy central Florida, references to “No Nukes,” a leftist cause from 1979—not 1969—a secretary as an “associate” and modern phrases such as “not gonna lie” and “it’s not rocket science,” everything in the movie’s too 21st century for capturing the climactic heroic event of the 20th century.

Fly Me to the Moon contains spurts of promising and beautiful pictures, ideas and moments—a sunrise, the publicist writing a diary, gardening as a metaphor for expressing grief, a fire theme—but punches them down and crams them into a boiling stew of snark, snivel and sleaze. What comes out is a rotten, bitter bastardization of Apollo 11 as an amalgam of faith, religion and the same, old line that the ends (man on the moon) justify the means (state-sponsored lying, faking, looting private property). The worst line has Tatum’s launch boss, having come out as a believer to get a religious senator’s vote for NASA funding, rallying Mission Control with the lie that Apollo 11 fulfills “one man’s promise to the world,” presumably a reference to the assassinated President Kennedy’s pre-death moon pledge, which, whatever its merit, was not a pact with nations across the globe. If NASA’s men and Americans were motivated to create, innovate and rally around Apollo 11 by worship of a single government leader’s promise—a dubious assertion—it’s not on display here.

Who’s to blame for this mess of a movie? Who knows. I suspect it’s not entirely Greg Berlanti’s or screenwriter Rose Gilroy’s fault and Sony Pictures usually makes decent movies. This leaves Apple Original films, run by Apple TV+, which claims to make great works of art. Apple’s press stuff never touts that, though, emphasizing metrics instead. The computer company’s stock descriptor says:

After its launch on November 1, 2019, Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service in its debut. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have earned 498 wins and 2,187 award nominations and counting, including multi-Emmy Award-winning comedy “Ted Lasso” and historic Oscar Best Picture winner “CODA.”

The influence-peddling of stressing what others may think—award wins—and numbers above artistic integrity and value may be what cost Apple and company success for a movie about something grand which might have been groundbreaking and good. Fly Me to the Moon takes a road to nowhere.

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