A charitable explanation for the new film co-starring and is that the creators got stoned one night and watched the cheesy 1978 movie , about a faked lunar mission to Mars. “Hey, you know what would make this movie even better?” one of them must have asked rhetorically. “If it were a love story, too.
” The result is the misbegotten , which somehow manages to be less credible than — and that movie featured O.J. Simpson as an astronaut.
The film weirdly blends together romantic comedy, historical drama and conspiracy thriller into exactly the sort of unholy mess that you’d expect. Except no one would expect it to be a numbing 132 minutes long. It’s no wonder Tatum looks uncomfortable throughout.
It’s no spoiler to reveal that a key plot element involves a conspiracy to fake the Apollo 11 moon landing, since the trailer gives it away with all the discretion of a drunken sailor. It’s a ridiculous premise, made all the more so by how long the screenplay by Rose Gilroy (Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein are credited with the story) takes to get there. We’re first introduced to Kelly Jones (Johansson), an advertising executive whose boldness is demonstrated by a scene in which she successfully pitches ideas to a roomful of skeptical men while wearing padding designed to make her look pregnant.
News of her talents have apparently reached Moe Berkus ( , looking like he’s still playing E. Howard Hunt in HBO’s ), a shady, fedora-wearing government operative who recru.
