It can be argued that historical fact is a product effectively advertised and sold to us by our governments. The United States is no stranger to shady dealings, often going to great lengths to showcase failures as successes and modest successes as monumental achievements. It’s a feat Scarlett Johansson’s cunning marketing specialist Kelly Jones is tasked with in Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon, as she works overtime to sell the American public on the fading Apollo Space program, even if she has to fake the first moon landing to do it.

This vast and famous conspiracy isn’t part of a twisty thriller but a star-studded romantic comedy. Yet, it’s unfortunate that Fly Me To The Moon’s sense of humour is as spick, span, and sterile as the spaceships and laboratories it takes place in. At each turn Berlanti’s comedy plays it safe. It’s clear Fly Me to the Moon relies on star power to keep it in orbit but sparkling chemistry can only go so far before its nuts and bolts come undone. Berlanti’s film doesn’t crash land, because it never actually takes off. 

Fly Me To the Moon opens with newsreel footage detailing the flailing state of Nasa’s Apollo program as it prepares its first manned lunar landing in 1969. Desperate to beat The Soviet Union to the moon, shady Nixon administration agent Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) enlists dynamite marketing exec Kelly Jones to spearhead greater public support and government funding for the program. Once she touches down in Cape Canaveral, sparks fly and heads butt between her and Apollo 11’s launch director, Cole Davis (Channing Tatum). In her efforts to drum up support for the program, she’s tasked with staging a backup moon landing in case the real mission goes awry.

The shadow of the ongoing Vietnam War looms heavy over the film with frequent cuts to actual news footage, carrying with it a commentary on the importance of highlighting the truth, even if it’s dark and bitter. Yet, it’s a message that fails to land in a film that’s full of moments just as stilted, stagey, and simulated as the fake moon landing it centres on. Like its main characters, Fly Me To The Moon is charming on the surface. Davis and Kelly wholly lack the idiosyncrasies and foibles that would render them and their budding romance exciting. They feel less like living, breathing people and more like the lifeless, perfectly engineered machinery surrounding them. While the two are given dark backstories, they factor more as plot devices rather than anything informing Tatum and Johansson’s performances.

While their chemistry does some heavy lifting, Harrelsson’s commie-hating Berkus and Jim Rash’s fake landing director emerge as highlights. However, they too strain to elevate the film’s uber-safe brand of humour, even with their impeccable sense of comedic timing.

For a film that attempts to champion the bitter truth, it’s afraid to provoke with its comedy, often clutching onto gags more dated than its sixties time period. The laziest of these attempts involves attractive characters being called hot the moment they’re accidentally lit on fire. 

The air of inauthenticity that surrounds Fly Me To The Moon is compounded by its flat, clean, and cookie-cutter visuals, which bear more in common with the Hallmark channel than anything made for the silver screen. As a result, the experience comes across as too digestible, feeling like an extension of the crisp marketing campaigns employed by Johansson’s Kelly.