Fly Me to the Moon
Fly Me to the Moon
Sparks fly in all directions as marketing maven Kelly Jones, brought in to fix NASA's public image, wreaks havoc on Apollo 11 launch director Cole Davis' already difficult task of putting a man on the moon. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as backup, and the countdown truly begins.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 1, 2025
Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me To The Moon conjures the romanticism of the space race that dared a nation to dream for the Moon, but lacks any real romance between its stars.
Johansson is charming as the fiercely feminine marketing virtuoso, Kelly Jones, that can sell anything to anyone. Tatum plays Cole Davis, the launch director for the Apollo 11 mission tasked with beating the Russians to the moon despite an ever dwindling budget and resources. Idling in the background is Harrelson as Moe Berkus, the federal agent that recruited Jones and is overseeing the mission and ensuring that it’s successful, you know…..even if it isn’t.
The romance element didn’t really work, in my opinion. The supposed spark between Jones and Davis is so hot and cold, hot and cold but in a not very believable fashion. Thankfully it’s not the central aspect of the story and it’s much less of a romcom than the trailer makes it out to be. It’s really more about selling the dream of the moon landing to the American people (and perhaps more importantly) to congressmen. When it comes to films, I’m kind of a sucker for space race stories. Play the Kennedy speech,
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”
Play Walter Cronkite removing his glasses and being momentarily speechless, or play Armstrong’s
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Anyone of those moments is usually enough to keep me invested emotionally. This one has all three. I was glad that this was much less about faking the moon landing, or fake-faking the moon landing as I had thought. But it incorporates all of that stuff fairly cleverly into the finale. Overall, it was a cute movie that the whole family enjoyed.