Hollywood has a great knack for giving you the truth while presenting it as fiction.

Those who have spent more than 5 minutes on the internet over the last 15 years have probably heard about the conspiracy that the US government faked the moon landing to win a proxy war against Russia.

In the late 1960s, the world was racing to become the first country to plant its flag on the moon and the United States was the first to beat the rest of the punch.  or were they?  it has long been alleged that the historic Moon landing footage was faked and everything took place on a soundstage to give the illusion to the world that we had landed on the moon.

So how exactly is the audience supposed to react when the latest film from Columbia Pictures based its entire plot around the fact that the United States did fake the moon landing to a certain degree? Do we just accept this film as a complete work of fiction or do we fail to come to terms with the reality that our government has been lying to us for at least 60 years?

 That is the fundamental question for the film Fly Me to the Moon. The film stars Scarlett Johansson as a glorified con woman named Kelly who has made a career in marketing and advertising as the trade requires a lot of lying to sell a product to a customer. After getting a job offer to work for NASA down in Florida, Kelly meets a man named Cole who is just months away from sending the first astronauts from the United States of America to the Moon in a successful mission that will seal the country’s victory over Russia.

Unbeknownst to Cole,  Kelly meets with a federal agent working for the president who talks Kelly into creating a contingency plan in case the moon landing is not successful.  Kelly is told to stage a fake moon landing from a soundstage at NASA that will be shown to the public in case the real Mission goes awry.  Kelly must pull all of her resources to create a fictional account of the moon landing without coal finding out what she is doing behind the scenes.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first,  does the film tell us that the moon landing is fake?  yes and no. The film is a bait and switch as the plot teases its audience about the reveal that the moon landing had been falsified only to come around at the very end and somewhat admit that while they did film a false moon landing the one that they showed in front of the whole world was legitimate.

 If you choose to believe that line of thinking then you are probably gullible enough to believe something stupid such as that LeBron James is the best basketball player of all time. With that said, the focus of the movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy that doesn’t sell either of the genres.

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are two good-looking leads however these two cannot force themselves to have any chemistry that simply doesn’t exist.  Channing Tatum who plays the more straight-faced character throughout the film plays a man who is trying to focus on making history with the NASA program while Scarlett Johansson is more concerned about making a name for herself even if that means misleading everyone in her sight.

It feels like the filmmakers thought that with two good-looking leads, this would be enough to justify being labeled romantic, however, the film doesn’t provide us Any indication that our characters are falling in love with one another as they spend more time at odds with one another.

The chemistry of this movie is so lazy you would think of this as something that was written by the WWE. As far as the comedic aspect of this movie, don’t expect to see much of that either. The closest thing that this film has to resembling a comedy is actor Jim Rash playing an over-the-top prima donna director who has been tasked with creating the fake moon landing footage. 

Outside of that the comedy in this film is on the level of an ABC sitcom which means that unless you like television shows such as Modern Family or The Big Bang Theory you are unlikely to get much of a chuckle out of this film. At the end of the day, this film fails because of its writing which shouldn’t be very surprising because Rose Gilroy is an accredited writer Who has fewer film credits than a writer for Rick and Morty. 

At the end of the day ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ exposes the fatal flaw and many big-budget projects,  you can throw all the money at the biggest names available. 

If you don’t have the right storytellers all you’re going to be left with is a soulless Journey that may get held up by veteran actors making the most out of nothing.

2/5

Don’t forget to Subscribe for Updates. Also, Follow Us at Society-Reviews, YouTube,  Twitter, Odysee, Rumble, and Twitch