Find Me Falling (Netflix, 2024) & Fly Me To The Moon (Theaters, 2024)
Find Me Falling is a sweet natured romantic comedy from Cyprus, starring Harry Connick Jr. as a musician who returns to the island and reconnects with an old flame.
Written and directed by Stelana Kliris, this first Cypriotic Netflix movie is an easy to like charmer, if you’re in the mood for sun, sea and, well, suicide.
Here’s the thing: John Allman (Connick Jr.) is a past his prime rockstar, who relocates to Cyprus after his comeback album flops.
John has a past there, but he is so sad he just buys a house on a cliff, without checking any references. Turns out it’s the local suicide hotspot.
And there we basically stumble on the theme of the movie: it’s better to fall in love than fall to your death. I guess that’s as subtle as a sledgehammer, but then again, romantic comedies just have to be life-affirming, don’t they?!
And John has definitely been in love before. He dated Cameron Diaz and Tyra Banks, but his biggest hit Girl on the Beach was inspired by a girl from Cyprus: Sia (Agni Scott), who is now the local doctor.
Can you see where this is going? I’m sure you can.
Find Me Falling is a good looking movie, with two likable leads, and a fine supporting cast, that includes Ali Fumiko Whitney as talented singer Melina and Tony Demetriou as local police captain Manoli.
It also has some nice music and many beautiful shots of the island, while Kliris manages to mix a sense of lighthearted fun with a melancholy undertone.
And sometimes that’s enough.
FLY ME TO THE MOON
Fly Me To The Moon is an ambitious but somewhat underwhelming romantic comedy drama, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum.
Scarjo plays Kelly, a sassy marketing maven hired to fix the NASA’s poor public image in the run up to the 1969 launch of the Apollo 11 moon mission.
Tatum plays Cole, a former fighter pilot who dreamt of going to space himself. But due to medical issues he had to settle for second best and so became NASA’s launch director.
Cole can’t stand Kelly’s marketing ploys, but neither can deny the fact that they are very much attracted to each other.
Had director Greg Berlanti settled for this story, it would have been enough and things would have probably worked out fine. But after about an hour the ‘real’ plot kicks in. Which has to do with the mythical story that the moon landing was faked and that Kubrick was hired to shoot the fake landing in a film studio.
Had this been the premisse from the outset I’m sure the result could have been a fine comic thriller, too. But switching and mixing genres isn’t easy and the movie doesn’t benefit from its wild tonal shifts.
I’d still give it three stars, cause Tatum and Johansson definitely bring their movie star charisma to keep things watchable. But it could have been a lot better if the filmmakers had made the choice what story they really wanted to tell instead of letting the movie run for over two hours, while trying to cram too much in.
I even got to thinking that maybe this was originally supposed to be a series for Apple (the streamer where this space age love story will eventually land), before it was turned into a movie and sent to theaters. But that’s just wild speculation on my part.