Fly Me to the Moon (review)
My eyes are still burning from this painfully misbegotten attempt to... I don’t know what. Bring back the horrible racial, cultural, and gender stereotypes of the 1960s? Creep out audiences with a depiction of weirdly, disturbingly human-ish flies the likes of which we haven’t seen since the tiny head of that mad scientist squeeked out “Help me!” from atop the body of a fly caught in a spiderweb in 1958? Or was it all just an excuse to deploy what may be the first animated 3D sneeze, complete with flying boogers? Ugh. Three young boy flies who live near Cape Kennedy in 1969 decide they’ll gonna tag along on the moonshot -- we know they’re boys because, you know, they don’t have breasts or wear dresses like the girl flies do, and anyway, everyone knows girls aren’t into science stuff. Things get complicated when some evil Soviet flies -- who look, in perhaps the movie’s most embarrassing aspect, like propagandistic caricatures -- attempt to thwart the mission. As awful as the animation is, the script is worse, full of terrible, senseless puns like one character’s exclamation “Oh my lord of the flies,” which is repeated endlessly, and other plainly nonsensical stuff: why is there a news van from D-CUP TV in a children’s movie?
viewed at a private screening with an audience of critics
rated G
official site | IMDB
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comments
posted by JoshB (Fri Aug 15 08, 12:29PM)
Flies? Are they serious? They want us to cheer for horrid, repellent little vermin that like to take a stroll on dog shit and then float on over to our picnic baskets?
posted by MaryAnn (Fri Aug 15 08, 5:19PM)
But they're cute!* They don't look like flies at all. In fact, one of them has a line like, "Well, we do have eyes in the back of our heads" (explaining how one of them could have seen something you wouldn't expect him to see) except they don't! They have two eyes on the front of their heads, like humans do.
(*No, they're not, actually. But they're meant to be.)
posted by Chris-E (Fri Aug 15 08, 8:13PM)
Are there any piles of shit in this movie (since the characters are flies)?
posted by MaryAnn (Fri Aug 15 08, 11:18PM)
I don't recall -- I think not.
posted by Tonio Kruger (Sat Aug 16 08, 10:25AM)
Things get complicated when some evil Soviet flies -- who look, in perhaps the movie’s most embarrassing aspect, like propagandistic caricatures -- attempt to thwart the mission.
--MaryAnn Johanson
Unfortunately, given recent events in Georgia, it looks like a bad week to complain about Soviet caricatures.
Or to put it another way:
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up Russophobia."