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This week at Tryon Theatre is “Fly Me To The Moon” (Berlanti), a delightfully enjoyable romantic comedy that harkens back to an era before that term even existed. There is a classical quality to this film, one that hinges on style, snappy dialogue, and star power, reveling in the charisma and winking charm of its leads. The stars at the center of this romp are Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, each playing to their strengths, with Johansson wry and knowing and Tatum capable and cheekily earnest. Their characters begin a romance against the backdrop of the 1960s space race, both integral to the mission(s) at hand. These players fit perfectly into the film’s bubbly and bright atmosphere, with a narrative that indulges the hilariously impractical.

The film opens with Johansson’s character, Jones, a slick Madison Avenue executive who knows exactly the world in which she operates. She plays the men around her like fiddles, her allure and presumed incompetence both tools at her disposal. Soon after their demonstration, Jones’s talents for manipulation are directed, against her will, by the government towards the Apollo 11 missions—the government seeing great potential in her capacity to aid the waning public support for the missions. Their solution to this is to have her oversee a Hollywood-esque production of a moon landing on a soundstage while they simultaneously prepare for the actual moon landing. 

Tatum plays Cole Davis, a tightly laced and disciplined NASA mission director and veteran pilot with dozens of successful missions. Davis is a man consumed with the practical mission at hand, someone completely uninterested in and unsupportive of Jones’s propaganda production. This narrative tension of their respective missions and ideologies is a classical cinematic setup and one employed to predictably satisfying ends as they push and pull throughout the film, their disagreements as much flirtation as contention. 

The space race was an era in which the competition with the USA and the USSR had as much to do with optics as it had to do with actual success. The court of public appeal, both internal and international, weighed heavily on the potential success of the space race, the excessive funding dependent on respective populaces tolerating this expense while they felt increasingly disenchanted with their social-political status quo. While these tensions are historically accurate, how the US responded to them in this film is a highly entertaining flight of fancy, perfectly situating these hypotheticals within the scope of real history.

“Fly Me to the Moon,” like many period pieces, derives great charm from the aesthetic trappings of its production. The meticulously assembled outfits, sets, and hairdos are a far cry from the lived-in reality of the late 60s era depicted, but their artificial unity of period accuracy is a delight to look at, a celebration of the cinematic medium. This careful curation compliments the genre at play, a bright and cheerful foundation for frothy fun. We hope you will join us for the classic charm and easy humor of “Fly Me To the Moon!”