'Fly Me to the Moon' review: Scarlett Johansson romcom has  failure to launch

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 American moment (Vietnam not withstanding). It also has Channing Tatum, usually a terrific leading man, as Cole Davis, an uptight NASA launch director whose insistence on integrity and hard work collides with Kelly’s freewheeling morality.

But “Fly Me to the Moon” is thoroughly unsure about what it’s doing. For starters, take Kelly and Cole, who go from mutual loathing to mutual attraction. That’s romcom 101 — and it would have worked if the two hadn’t already met at a diner where Cole gushed over Kelly’s beauty. (So much for unspoken sexual tension.) Or take Kelly’s kooky friend Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash), a budding film director who winds up out-Kubricking Kubrick. Why is he so demanding, illogical and abusive? We might have liked him if he were, you know, likable. About the only character that lands solidly is Moe Burkus, a shady government operative played with sinister charm by Woody Harrelson.

Like a lot of moviegoers, I'd watch Johannson and Tatum in just about anything — and I have, from her “Lucy” to his “Step Up” — but this is asking a lot. Johansson at least gets to go full farce (fake identities, Southern accents, etc.) but Tatum mostly makes earnest speeches to NASA staffers. Eventually, screenwriter Rose Gilroy and director Greg Berlanti (the television veteran behind “Everwood” and other series) hand their movie over to a cat — a cute little black one who frightens the superstitious Cole and turns up when you least (read: most) expect it. Yep, it’s that kind of movie.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman