Fly Me to the Moon
Year: 2024
Rating: PG-13
Length: 132 minutes / 2.20 hours
NASA’s Gemini and Apollo programs remain the pinnacle of human achievement. Plenty of movies have told these stories of success and tragedy. The Right Stuff (1983), Apollo 13 (1995), Hidden Figures (2016), and First Man (2018) all tried to get somewhat close to what really happened while still being entertaining. Fly Me to the Moon (2024), however, may have leaned too much into the entertainment while being light on the facts. What’s worse, in an era of misinformation, this movie could be seen as enforcing conspiracy theories surrounding the event.
Considering this movie is a comedy, it shouldn’t be taken seriously. If you watch it and have a few laughs while considering a “what if” scenario, then it’s harmless fun. In thinking through the “why,” though, Fly Me to the Moon provides some chilling Cold War guesses as to the motive behind a conspiracy like this—some of which may be valid arguments for the conspiracy’s validity. And as soon as we question what really happened, then other historical moments are surely to come under misinformed scrutiny. That’s a rabbit hole that should be avoided.
Still, this star-studded film has its moments. Thinking about these space programs from a marketing perspective was a new way to present these historical events. That it initially has that tongue-in-cheek nod to the idea that the moon landing was faked and this was how they did it is also a fun idea. Ultimately, it does land squarely on the truth that we did land on the moon in the late 1960s. However, it’s also great at building the tension to make the audience question whether or not it was going to happen.
An amusing “what if” movie that has some loose facts thrown in, I give Fly Me to the Moon 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
