Less than a decade after the July 20, 1969, united much of the world in astonishment and awe, various , and started claiming that the mission was a massive hoax. Skeptics pointed to supposed “ ”—misaligned shadows, the absence of visible stars behind Neil Armstrong’s helmeted head, the fact that the American flag was extended as though flapping in an impossible breeze (it was, in truth, supported by a )—to speculate that the published images from the lunar expedition had been fabricated. The new romantic comedy trades on that thoroughly debunked but oft-repeated conspiracy theory.
Arriving in theaters across the United States on July 12, the film, which stars Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, doesn’t assert that the mission was a sham. Instead, it envisions in farcical fashion what would have happened if the government had a plan to fake the moon landing in case the real mission failed. In the movie’s fanciful telling, NASA flight director Cole Davis (played by Tatum)—a fictional character inspired partly by real-life Gene Kranz and Gerry Griffin, the latter of whom served as an adviser on the production—is unaware of the conspiracy.
He’s too busy trying to make the real mission work, not to mention too honorable to take part in such deception. Johansson, meanwhile, portrays Kelly Jones, an advertising whiz who’s initially brought in to sell the Apollo program to a skeptical public. Exaggeration doesn’t bother her; nor does casting telegenic, coop.