Posts Tagged ‘FLY ME TO THE MOON’

FLY ME TO THE MOON: 2 ½ STARS. “reaches for the stars, but never quite gets there.”

SYNOPSIS: During the 1960s Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, a relationship develops between the NASA lunch director and a New York advertising executive brought in to make sure every American knew what NASA was all about. “When I’m done,” says advertising exec Kelly Jones of the Apollo 11 astronauts, “these men are going to be bigger than the Beatles.”

CAST: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jim Rash, Anna Garcia, Donald Elise Watkins, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Christian Zuber, Nick Dillenburg, Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson. Directed by Greg Berlanti.

REVIEW: Space Age rom com “Fly Me to the Moon” reaches for the stars, but never quite gets there. Charming a-listers Johansson and Tatum play fictional characters, a fast talking advertising executive—“The Killer From Manhattan,” they call her—and a tightly wound NASA launch director. As per the rom com formula, they meet cute, have an immediate attraction, and then spend much of the remainder of the movie’s over-long 2-hour and 12-minute runtime falling in and out of lust.

As if that wasn’t enough, their flirtation takes place against a backdrop of one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs—and one of the biggest conspiracy theories—of the Twentieth Century.

It’s an odd mix, and one that only works sporadically. When director Greg Berlanti allows Johansson and Tatum to parry, the movie works.

Johansson’s Kelly is a compulsive liar, someone who doesn’t mind bending the rules to get what she wants—for instance, she hires actors to do news interviews for press shy NASA engineers—and when she is in full flight, the character is wicked and fun. “We’re not lying to customers,” she says slyly, “we’re changing the way they think.”

Tatum has less to do, but is a solid leading man who can play it straight or bring a laugh when necessary. It’s not rocket science, but he pulls it off.

It’s when the movie shifts toward the moon launch story that it begins to fizzle like a wet firecracker. The move away from romance toward the supposedly tense July 16, 1969 Apollo 11 lift-off adds little to the movie except an extra half-hour.

Despite fun 1960s period piece details and charming leads, “Fly Me to the Moon” gets lost on lift-off.

FLY ME TO THE MOON: 0 STARS

FLY ME TO THE MOON: 0 STARS

In a recent review for an animated film I wrote, “WALL-E is the evolution of children’s films; after this the wisecracking animals and toilet jokes of Madagascar and the like will look like relics, as current as Steamboat Willie.” After enduring the 3-D talking gnat movie Fly Me to the Moon I have to expand that description to include more of Mother Nature’s creatures, including insects.
Flies seem to have made a bit of a pop cultural comeback of late. In addition to Fly Me to the Moon, there’s also an opera based on David Cronenberg’s movie The Fly and even a reality show based on Lord of the Flies (OK, I know I’m stretching the point a bit with that last one), but even though Pixar was able to work their magic and make rats loveable in Ratatouille, but I doubt if Fly Me to the Moon will turn mosquitoes, gnats, midges or house flies into the new creature du jour.

Fly Me to the Moon is billing itself as the first animated film to be designed, created, and released exclusively in 3-D. The story of three precocious flies who stowaway on board Apollo 11 to make the inaugural journey to the moon with Buzz Aldren and Neil Armstrong is, I guess a technical achievement, I just wish the filmmakers had spent as much time on the story and characters as they did on the 3-D effects. Even then, the spotty quality of the CGI pales by comparison to other recent animated movies. In that sense Fly Me to the Moon is to WALL-E what Donkey Kong is to Grand Theft Auto and even if Fly Me to the Moon had great animation it wouldn’t make up for the painfully bad dialogue and a repetitive story.

Apart from an entertaining “Busby Berkeley in Space” dance number, Fly Me to the Moon is a pesky 85 minute waste-of-time masquerading as family entertainment.

Where’s the deet when you really need it?