Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Score: 2.5 / 5

In his first directorial outing since Love, Simon, Greg Berlanti brings his considerable efforts to a period rom-com set in the '60s space race. Notably not queer, this material is an odd fit for Berlanti for other reasons: the Arrowverse and Broken Hearts Club mastermind hasn't handled anything this specific or detached from the millennium in many long years. The unwieldy material here vacillates from frothy, silly romance to surprisingly satirical political and historical commentary, and Berlanti is in way over his head. Perhaps it's primarily due to an unfocused screenplay, but evidence lies elsewhere: namely, the lack of chemistry between the two leads undermines the entire point of the film (as marketed). That's on Berlanti.

 An accomplished pilot who wanted to be an astronaut himself, NASA launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) can't pull himself out of his own past. The tragedy of Apollo 1 haunts him daily, even as he prepares for what is now Apollo 11. Putting American men on the moon is his goal, and he suffers no fools to distract him. Enter Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), the immaculately festooned advertising exec selected by a mysterious government agent (a delightfully rakish Woody Harrelson) to sell the moon landing to the American populace. Despite repeated comments on her beauty, Johansson knows her character is a shark among the scientists and engineers: Jones is really good at her job, probably due to her chameleonic ability to lie and manipulate others, constantly using verbal smoke and mirrors to disguise her machinations. 

Naturally, the two aren't going to work well, and the film's plot hinges on that. After a meet cute, she sets her sights on charming him while he actively erects walls to hinder her advances. Their banter feels straight out of old Hollywood, to the point that I half expected Doris Day or Cary Grant to pop onscreen. the difference is that Johansson at least appears to be having fun; Tatum is perhaps needfully stoic and dour, but he sticks out like a sore thumb, unable to muster his usual inner charm. It doesn't help that he's made up to look somewhat plastic, and his costumes do nothing to highlight his physique or confidence. One wonders what another casting choice might have done to boost this aspect of the story, which was maybe unfairly marketed as its primary conceit.

The film does, however, work remarkably well when Jones's last-ditch Plan B kicks into gear. Her assignment is to hire a film crew to fake the moon landing footage. It's couched in a believable, high-stakes concern that something could go terribly wrong, and we certainly don't want the general public to see that live on television. It's a familiar idea to anyone who's heard the conspiracy theories about Kubrick's similar involvement in real life, and the film has a lot of fun dramatizing this effort in thickly fictionalized manner. Jim Rash graces the film with intoxicating panache as the ostentatiously flamboyant director working with Jones to realize this scheme. He's in it for a chance to test his artistry; she's in it on government mandate, and has to keep the operation secret from Davis.

Rash might be the only person in this film who really understood and leaned into what the movie could have been, aggressively chewing the scenery and prancing around in bespoke suits with outrageous patterns and color. Johansson is solid, and Harrelson's final scene makes up for his wonky, scattered appearances, but the rest of the cast and crew don't seem to know what this material should be or how best to execute it. The longer the film continues, the more heavy-handed its dialogue, devolving into groan-inducing exposition dumps between main characters as the comedy flips to forced romance and contrived stakes. Logical steps aren't taken for granted, and instead of letting the audience catch up organically, the film constantly reminds us of motives and rationales that should be obvious and frankly aren't necessary anyway. Let the astronauts fly, let the filmmakers create, and let the lovers work (or not), but don't concurrently commentate. 

Gorgeous production design and occasionally inspired cinematography make the film eminently watchable, and anyone interested in the period or the space race itself will find plenty here to enjoy. But a historical treatise -- even a farce -- about the faked moon footage this most certainly is not, nor is it a satisfying comedy, romance, or combination of the two. Specificity would have won the day here, methinks, to make this material rise above mediocrity and mean something to audiences in 2024.

Love, Simon (2018)

Score: 3 / 5

Oh boy, here it is. The "groundbreaking" gay teen romance everyone's been losing their minds over. Listen, folks, because I'm only going to say all this once.

I liked the damn thing, but it is super problematic. So let's all agree to stop calling it "groundbreaking". There is nothing groundbreaking here, except that a major studio backed this project. That's it.

The trouble for me started in the first scene, when Simon's voiceover began with "I'm just like you". I choked aloud on my peppermint. I don't know about you, but I was nothing like Simon. He's unbelievably privileged, living in a gorgeous house with hot parents and a bff-sister. He gets a car for his birthday and drives his group of incredibly diverse friends -- who are all much more intelligent and adjusted than any high schooler should be -- to school every day, where their teachers are impossibly crass and crude and somehow don't get fired for swearing or touching the kids but are nevertheless so charming and funny and kind that you don't care. Oh, and the school is so liberal-minded that the kids are performing Cabaret for the musical. That's right, Caba-gaddam-ret. Are you kidding me?!

I know what you're thinking, yeah but Micah every high school rom-com features unrealistically wealthy/intelligent/funny characters. Maybe. But not all of them start off deliberately selling themselves as a mirror image of their audience. And not all of them deal with real-life life-or-death situations that have conveniently disappeared from the narrative. For instance: Bullying. The film is about a gay kid anxiously agonizing over when and how he'll "come out"; the whole movie is about this super-privileged "problem" Simon has, even though he successfully passes as straight in so many ways and for so long, apparently. But why, exactly, does he agonize over this? His parents are aggressively liberal, and he says in voiceover he knows they'll be fine with it. His friends obviously wouldn't care. None of the characters cite religious objections. The vice principal of the school wears a pride flag pin. The only suggestion of bullying comes from two jerks who pretend to be Simon and Ethan, the token gay of the school, dry-humping on a cafeteria table. As if that was even comparable to the bullying some of us have received.

Speaking of Ethan, who is pretty great in a severely underwritten role, there is one nasty little scene I want to comment upon. After the "bullying" incident, Simon sort-of kind-of apologizes to him for never standing up for him, although he pointedly remarks that bullying never really happened that their school before he, Simon, came out. That is some tone-deaf bullshit if I ever heard it. Ethan, black and notably feminine, has surely not had it as easy as Simon thinks; and yet the film denies Ethan any chance to respond. The scene shifts and the moment is gone.

Simon's privilege extends to other spheres as well. He can actively perform in the school musical -- again, Cabaret, I just can't -- with no suspicion of faggotry, and even when the obnoxious star of the show tries to blackmail him, the two are a sort of friends. He thinks dancing to Whitney Houston with a bunch of peers in vibrant, colored t-shirts is too gay. After he learns that his crush likes Game of Thrones Simon walks down the school hall hunting for guys wearing fan shirts. For each he sees, worn by boys who are clearly more interested in comics and television than sports, he all but recoils in disgust. I can just read the bro-college version of Simon's Grindr profile now: "No fats, no femmes, masc4masc, not racist but...".

Think I'm wrong? Try again. Simon isn't even a great protagonist. He allows himself to be blackmailed (again, for no discernible reason) into manipulating his friends into dating each other. It's weird. Not even like Dangerous Liaisons weird. Just a sort of banal, irritating, stupid sitcom kind of weird. And then, at the end, after he realizes he screwed up all his friendships, they magically (and with no clear motive) all come flocking back to love and support him and even cheer him on as he kisses his newfound love interest.

I'm being pretty harsh here, but I was a little embarrassed to be supporting this movie. Greg Berlanti, you know better. You should have done better. I mean, come on, Josh Duhamel plays an "every dad" and Jennifer Garner is his hardcore white liberal wife. There are no stakes in this movie.

Which, if I may change my tone a tad, was endearing as all hell. After Oscar season, it was a little refreshing to just mindlessly enjoy a movie. It's a very funny, very sweet movie, and it even brought a tear or two to mine eye. It's got a killer soundtrack, too. And, yes, it normalizes gay teen romance by disturbing heteronormative conventions (sort of?), yadda yadda. I was a little empowered to hear the reasonably-full theater applaud and laugh and cry to the film, and I couldn't help but wonder how different my life would be had I seen a flick like this in middle school or high school.

But I also couldn't help but wonder how many people a movie like this will hurt, will convince that their situation is inescapable or hopeless, will push just that much closer to the brink. Even I, well past my high school years, walked out of the theater a little disheartened because I knew I was heading back out into the real world, where terrible things happen to people who aren't as lucky as Simon.

IMDb: Love, Simon