Romantic comedies are a tricky genre to pull off these days; they’re either honey-suckle-sweet or overly ambitious in the comedy department. In short, rom-com stories can be inconsistent in what they’re trying to say. On the other hand, audiences have become very fickle toward rom-coms. Fortunately for Fly Me to the Moon, director Greg Berlanti strikes an uncommon chord with the 1960s-set film, hitting theaters this weekend.

Berlanti, who directed Love, Simon previously, strikes the right chemistry in the romance featuring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum as two unlikely people who fall for one another and don’t necessarily overdo it in the comedy arena.

NASA has an image problem with the public and following JFK’s proclamation to land a man on the moon, along with a spate of failures, congress feels its time to shift resources into other programs, namely our presence in Vietnam as well as pressing domestic problems. Queue Johansson’s Kelly Jones, a quirky Madison Avenue-type ad executive to improve their image.

Even with the pressures for a successful launch of Apollo 11 mounting, Jones has another mission, courtesy of Woody Harrelson’s Moe Berkus.  Rose Gilroy’s script (from a story by Bill Kirstein and Keenan Flynn) uses the launch as a backdrop against the romance. In between the “you don’t belong here,” the era-perfect product placements for Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, and the Kubrick jokes surrounding Project Artemis, Berlanti injects compelling reasons for the mission to succeed on its own merits. Johansson similarly injects a spunky swiss-army-knife-can-do attitude at every corner, defined by her being able to tell men what men want in an era driven by, well men.

As Cole Davis, the NASA launch director charged with getting the mission going without a hitch spends a good deal of the story nonplussed. Tatum plays that part to the hilt, though there’s a cloud hanging over his head, beyond the need to raise more money and support. Tatum balances his incredulity with integrity, something we’ve come to expect from NASA-related stories. Along with that integrity, comes pride, something that Ray Romano’s Henry Smalls helps Davis along with. Romano’s performance as the assistant launch director is poignant, however the story underbakes many of the supporting performer roles. There isn’t an imbalance, per se – each of the supporting characters serves a purpose as the story focuses on Kelly and Cole; the feeling is there that they could have been more than they were rather than simply perfunctory.

To that end, Fly Me to the Moon shines in its technical achievements, realizing not only the NASA of the 1960s but the feeling that you were inspired by what humanity could achieve when pushed to its limits, along with the pomp and circumstance of creating a brand image for NASA.

From Daniel Pemberton’s amusing score to Dariusz Wolski’s gorgeous cinematography to Shane Valentino’s era-accurate production design, the art department, sets, costumes, and makeup, Berlanti assembled a crack team to drive Fly Me to the Moon’s message of inspiration.

At its center, remains Johannson’s spunk and Tatum’s integrity. The two actors gnaw away at each other’s idiosyncrasies until a purer, more common objective is achieved. The quirkiness takes the story in unexpected, but no-less-fun directions.

Fly Me to the Moon isn’t a riff on Sinatra’s classic song of the same name. Greg Berlanti has a tight hand on the film’s controls, with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum driving an inspired tale.