Fly Me to the Moon ★★★

THE most interesting aspect of rom-com Fly Me to the Moon is the sub-plot.

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum have good chemistry in Greg Berlanti’s film which provides pretty standard fare in terms of how the key relationship plays out.

But it’s the set-up and setting that lifts it above the average.

Tatum plays the head of the NASA team planning the first moon landing and Johansson is a public relations expert brought in to help lift the program’s public profile.

Her efforts are successful but not without problems as some of the tactics, such as having actors play engineers and dumbing down the science involved, annoy Tatum’s strait-laced boss.

Best of all is the decision by a shadowy government official, played by Woody Harrelson, to have the PR team stage and film a moon landing as insurance.

This gives us the best line in the film when the filming, under Johannson’s choice of a friend as director, isn’t going fully to plan.

“Well, we couldn’t get Kubrick” sums of some of the little joys that make Fly Me to the Moon worth a look.

Watched on Apple TV.