Fly Me To The Moon (2024)

I was super excited for this movie actually! Even though the marketing was all over the place, it was really good marketing. The poster we had was animated and I just really liked it. I'm very disappointed I couldn't find the GIF of it anywhere online. Anyway, looked funny, it was a historical piece about the Moon Landing, and it the trailer song was Hold On I'm Coming by Chuck Jackson and Maxine Brown.

Roan I thought this this movie was about bugs going to the moon. ...What? What the hell are you talking about Buggnutz? Hang on let me Google some stuff....

Buggnutz you're fired. You don't pay me. I do it for the love of the craft.

What's the Movie About?

Scarlett Johansson plays an advertisement agent with a troubled past brought on by a shady Woody Harrelson to advertise/fake the Moon Landing. Channing Tatum is the landing director of NASA with a troubled past who butts heads with ScarJo before they both fall in love.

What I Like.

The comedy of this movie is amazing. I love quick-witted humor and when jokes are told back-to-back-to-back. It encourages multiple watches and when the jokes are funny and the story is good, that's a great thing. Yeah, script's great. I like all the characters and the pace is mostly on on par with the jokes. Channing Tatum made my celebrity crush list with this movie, who can a man so handsome be so awkward and still so charming. It's witchcraft. I also like the Moe character, Woody really rocks the G-Man look and attitude. Also ScarJo is hot, but I don't think I needed to tell you that. Her character has a really good arc in the story though, I think her and Channing Tatum stood out in that regard. Ray Romano has most of the emotional moments and my god is he so good at making it work. It is kinda crazy actually. I like the visual elements of the story. For whatever reason, shots with a foreground moving slower than the background is very visually appealing to me. They did it at the beginning of Deadpool 2, and they do it for a montage in this movie. The montages are pretty cool looking period. They do a bunch of split screen with animated news clippings and play news segments from the time. I love the jazz soundtrack as well. My final praise is how they do the moon landing. It is so amazing how the movie makes you hope an event you know has happened, happens. One half of the story is the NASA engineers trying to make sure that Neil, Buzz, and the other guy can land and return from the Moon. Y'know, the most famous event that happened in Space and the  coolest thing the US government ever did? We all know how it ends. But while I knew that intellectually, my limbs were tingling when they counted down to liftoff, and the was on the edge of my seat when they landed. It helps that this is also where all the various plot threads and schemes in the movie are converging, so it's like a firecracker going off. The best heist movies do this, and this movie is basically a heist movie but instead of stealing something, they're going to space. Fly Me To The Moon is awesome.

What I Didn't Like.

Despite the comedy being so tight, the movie is a little shaggy in places. They only really introduce the faking the Moon Landing part of the story over halfway through the movie. Speaking of which, I don't know if it was good idea to court the "Moon Landing was fake" conspiracy theory for a plot. Like the jokes are funny and the story is interesting, but you know some loons are gonna use this movie as evidence that the Moon Landing was faked. But it was. All I have to say to you, Buggnutz, is Rooster Tails. 

Final Summation.

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but my favorite show of all time is Leverage. It's about a bunch of con artists using their skills to scam rich people to help regular people. It's super good. What does this have to do with Fly Me To The Moon? Well the movies is basically a long episode that takes place in the 60s. Seriously, the crew in this movie is an older guy with a tragic backstory that haunts him, a older sexy grifter, a smart black guy, a short guy, and a young lady who's used for out-of-water comic relief. That's Nate, Sophie, Hardison, Eliot, and Parker! And I love it. It's a lot of fun and it made me, someone very critical of nationalism and the US, swell with patriotic pride. Why can't we do more space stuff? I know being pro-NASA yet anti-military industrial complex makes me a hypocrite, but... You wanna meet an alien. I wanna meet an alien.