Fly Me To The Moon Offers A True Cinematic Rarity: Scarlett Johansson Having Fun

After its disappointing opening weekend at the box office, director Greg Berlanti's 1960s-set Space Race romantic comedy "Fly Me to the Moon" seems practically destined to become a forgotten film that will end up streaming on Apple TV+, where very few people will see it. That's a shame, because after a somewhat rocky opening few minutes, the movie settles into a nice groove and ends up becoming the type of charming, stylish throwback we're always saying we want to see more of. A huge part of the reason for the film's creative success is the casting of Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson in the lead roles; their chemistry is evident, and there's an old-fashioned playfulness to their banter. More importantly, though, the movie gives Johansson the opportunity to do something she's very rarely been allowed to do on screen: have fun. 

Despite being pigeon-holed as a sex symbol, Johansson has always been a tremendously talented actress, earning multiple Oscar nominations and leveraging her stardom to work with auteur directors like Christopher Nolan, Cameron Crowe, Noah Baumbach, Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze, the Coen Brothers, and many more. But aside from the animated "Sing" franchise and the 2017 comedic misfire "Rough Night," you have to go pretty far back into her filmography to find a major movie that doesn't weigh her down with some kind of trauma or world-shattering conflict that must be overcome in order to save the universe.

Thankfully, "Fly Me to the Moon" is breezy enough to sit back and let ScarJo play some different notes, and the result is a delightful change of pace that I hope the rest of the industry takes notice of, even if the film itself may slip into obscurity.

In "Fly Me to the Moon," Johansson plays Kelly Jones, a marketing expert hired by a shady government operative (Woody Harrelson) to help sell the concept of NASA's Space Race to the American people. She constantly butts heads with Tatum's comparatively stoic launch commander Cole Davis about the proper way to complete this objective, and naturally, the two of them eventually end up falling for each other in the process. It's a relatively chaste film, but there's a tangible connection between the performers; still, the best parts of the film are when Johansson slips into a different accent or temporarily adopts a new persona in order to achieve the results she's looking for. For a few minutes in this film, she's basically doing a riff on Eddie Murphy in the "Beverly Hills Cop" franchise, where Axel Foley's superpower is to assess any situation and immediately launch into an over-the-top characterization so confidently that he gets whatever he wants.

Again, Johansson is one of the most talented performers of her generation, and she's been a staple of action movies, dramas, and thrillers for well over a decade. But "Fly Me to the Moon" gave me a rare glimpse of her in a completely different mode, and it made me appreciate her even more. Regardless of the movie's box office performance, I hope she doesn't make this a one-time-only stop into that particular zone of acting.

I spoke a bit more about the movie on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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