What a weird movie.

Fly Me to the Moon, marketed as a bright, luxe, starry romantic comedy set during the United States vs. Russia space race and the Apollo 11 launch of 1969, is tottering at the box-office and getting very mixed reviews full of speculation about why it doesn’t work. But the film is so odd in its clash of genre formulae, and so essentially conservative in its outlook while featuring a bizarre use of some of the grimmer historical elements of ’69, it becomes a fascinating snapshot of our own wacko ideological moment in time.

This $100 million would-be rom-com stars Scarlett Johansson as top advertising rep Kelly Jones, who dazzles stolidly chauvinistic male clients with her curvaceous beauty and era-appropriate perkiness while going sharklike after success by any means necessary. She’s approached by an equally sharklike government op in the newly elected Nixon administration named Moe Burkus (Woody Harrelson), who coerces her into taking on the peculiar job of “selling” NASA and the Apollo 11 mission to a public disillusioned by failed moon launches and a Congress that’s about to pull NASA’s funding.