It’s 1969. NASA hires a hot New York marketing maven (Scarlett Johansson) to polish up the PR for the Apollo 11 mission, working closely but constantly clashing with the hunky launch director (Channing Tatum). Meanwhile (and this will thrill the conspiracy wackos), the Nixon Administration is so set on showing up the Russians that he orders the creation of a fake Moon landing on a sound stage to be used, you know, should the real mission fail.

This movie can’t seem to decide what it wants to be. With Johansson and Tatum on board, there’s a pretty good argument for a fun, Day/Hudson-type romantic romp. Then, it’s about the Apollo 11 Moon Mission, so maybe scientific historical fiction? And Woody Harrelson is in there playing a shady government agent, so could it be a spy pic? Or a conspiracy theory? 

Alas, it tries to be every one of these things and, unsurprisingly, fails at them all. Amazingly zero chemistry between the two leads, and the conspiracy stuff is lame and not remotely funny. The plotting is messy, it’s bloated at well over two hours, and it’s just not very entertaining.

On the plus side, it does succeed in parts as a drama when it respectfully touches on the deaths of the Apollo One astronauts on the launch pad in 1967. And the 60s-era recreation of Cape Canaveral is spot on. Finally, it’s almost worth seeing for Johansson’s constantly crackling performance alone. Almost. (132 min)