At The Movies: Romcom Fly Me To The Moon, immigrant drama Sight play it too straight

Fly Me To The Moon (PG13)

132 minutes, opens on Aug 1
3 stars

The story: The year is 1968 and the space race against the Soviets is losing support in an America exhausted by wars and civil unrest. Scarlett Johansson plays public relations minx Kelly Jones, tasked with fixing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa) image in the run-up to the Apollo 11 mission to put the first man on the moon. Channing Tatum is Cole Davis, the launch director she fights with and falls for.

How is it possible that ScarJo and Tatum, two of the sexiest earthlings, have so little chemistry in the retro romcom Fly Me To The Moon?

Tatum’s Cole is square like his jaw. He is not much into fun, burdened by the 1967 Apollo 1 tragedy.

Johansson, also the producer, is fortunately a comic fireball enough for two, rocketing into Cape Canaveral in Florida on her kitten heels to initiate peanut butter and underwear sponsorships for the unpopular and underfunded space programme.

Kelly is a throwback to the 1930s Hollywood screwball dames Rosalind Russell and Carole Lombard. Her cynicism offends upstanding Cole.

This is even before the con artist, who has a hidden past, is blackmailed by a shadowy government agent (Woody Harrelson) into broadcasting a staged version of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

There have indeed long been anti-science conspiracy theories that the Nasa expeditions were hoaxes.

Greg Berlanti (Love, Simon, 2018; the Arrowverse superhero TV franchise, 2012 to 2023) directs this overly complicated mixed bag of opposites-attract love story-cum-political satire. The greatest pleasures are the glamorous co-stars in their swanky period costumes, while Kelly’s farcical chicaneries feed into present-day institutional distrust and anxiety over fake images.

Hot take: This fictional romance about a historic event should have been fizzier, funnier and definitely shorter, but a comedy for grown-ups with old-fashioned star power and an original script is a good thing.

Sight (PG)

103 minutes, opens on Aug 1
3 stars

The story: Ming Wang, a descendant of five generations of doctors since the Qing Dynasty, survived China’s Cultural Revolution and racism in the United States to become a pre-eminent eye surgeon, restoring sight to millions with his groundbreaking treatment. His 2016 autobiography From Darkness To Sight is the source of this fictional feature starring Chinese-Canadian actor Terry Chen.

An Indian orphan (Mia SwamiNathan) intentionally blinded by her stepmother so that she could earn more as a beggar is brought to Wang’s institute in Nashville, Tennessee. Her tragedy compels him to confront the trauma of his own childhood in Sight.

The biopic set in 2007 covers five decades with sound performances from Chen and Ben Wang (from the 2023 Disney+ series American Born Chinese) as his teen counterpart.

It flashes back to the Communist Red Guards’ tyranny of violence over Ming Wang’s Hangzhou home town during the late 1960s – he remains haunted by his failure to save his classmate crush Lili (Sara Ye). It also takes in the early 1980s, when, at age 21, he arrived in America as a foreign exchange student with US$50 and a three-piece suit from his parents (Donald Heng and Leanne Wang).

To understand the movie, though, you have to start at the end credits.

The American production company is the Mormon-founded Angel Studios (Sound Of Freedom, 2023), and the real Wang of today appears to invite viewers to scan the studio’s on-screen QR code for a “pay it forward” donation. He bears testimony to “God’s grace” in his journey past the darkness of loss and guilt.

Director Andrew Hyatt (Paul, Apostle Of Christ, 2018) makes no religious references. But the faith-based story is still an inspirational one because of the universal values of Wang’s resilience, hard work and familial love.

Hot take: What you see is what you get with this straightforward and uplifting – if somewhat bland – immigrant tale.