Fly Me To The Moon - Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum

Fysh

I was slightly surprised not to have seen a thread for this anywhere. I can't seem to find the trailer online that I saw for this at the cinema recently, but this is the closest in tone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZO5k948MkY&t=11s

The version I saw played up the comedic aspect more so than the drama, and sold it as a Hail Caesar!-esque comedy. I've booked tickets for Saturday evening so I'll post again when I've seen it.

Tatum and Johansson both strike me as capable of doing a lot of heavy lifting if the material allows it - I'm not surprised that there's barely any mention of the director in the promotion, since I've mainly heard Greg Berlanti's name in relation to TV work (TV work that generally got praise, sure, but that's hardly a pitch for "You should pay to see this film in the cinema" for a lot of people).

JP Liz V1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058360169/fly-me-to-the-moon-scarlett-johansson-channing-tatum

I was sure there was a thread on this as I remember seeing the trailer earlier this year on here, unless in a general film thread

Apparently Channing took over from Chris Evans

AMKC

I too looked for a thread for this and did not find any. Wanted to see if people say its any good or not.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122396897#Comment_122396897

From what I gather, Tatum's character is wooden but it's somewhat saved by Johansson. So pretty decent overall.

Fysh

Just out of seeing this. Immediate impressions are that it's somewhere between grand and good. Enjoyable enough but it's not going to rock your world or compel you to want to rewatch it. As with all too many current films, it would probably have been better if it was 15-20 minutes shorter.

It has some good quippy dialogue but feels a significant rung lower than e.g. a Coen Brothers caper. As has been mentioned above, Tatum's Cole is quite uptight and he spends much of the film being the straight man to Johansson's Kelley, who is basically juggling all sorts of plates and manipulating people to make things happen.

I think the main thing holding it back is that it doesn't really have a coherent identity - it kind of wants to be a Coen Bros caper, but it also wants to be sincere in the importance of the mission, and there's a thread of ill-judged slapstick that prevents the two aspects from coalescing well.

It's not an enormous issue but I also think that the visual direction was generally unremarkable. There was some interesting playfulness around

Spoiler Warning

the whole Fake Moon Landing footage and whether what we were seeing at a given point was from the real landing or the soundstage

but a lot of it felt like it was blocked and staged around a television viewing experience. Which is a shame because when the whole film is about the need to sell the idea, to get people to buy into a dream, you want to give a visual sense of how and why people are persuaded to buy into it.