PLOT At NASA in 1969, a Madison Avenue executive must fake the Apollo 11 moon landing. CAST Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson RATING PG-13 (some language) LENGTH 2:02 WHERE Area theaters BOTTOM LINE Two charismatic stars, trapped in a module that won’t fly. In the romantic comedy “Fly Me to the Moon,” we first see Scarlett Johansson’s Kelly Jones bursting into a boardroom full of car company bigwigs.
It’s 1969, so they mistake her for a secretary, but in fact she’s a high-powered ad executive. Talking rapidly and moving her body suggestively — despite looking about eight months pregnant — Kelly pitches an unlikely ad campaign about seat belts: They’re not just safe, they’re sexy! The drooling saps buy it. Little do they know that Kelly isn’t even pregnant: She was wearing a foam bump the whole time.
I did not understand this scene when I first saw it and — try as I might — I still don’t. Is it showing us a smart, accomplished woman succeeding in a man’s world? Or a con artist who crashed a meeting? If Kelly is using her body to seduce older men, why did she fake a pregnancy? Also, could someone explain the seat belt logic again? Questions like this nagged me nearly every minute of “Fly Me to the Moon.” Billed as the story of slick Madison Avenue operator Kelly who must fake the Apollo 11 moon landing in case the mission goes awry, the movie has plenty of appeal: period details, Mid-Mod outfits, a look back at a more hopeful .
