Reaching for the Moon: A weirdly thin musical trip

Is it worth the hour?

Honestly? Maybe if you’re a fan of early 30s radio crooners or you're doing some sort of weird marathon of forgotten musical oddities. If you’re looking for actual plot or character depth, you’re going to be bored out of your mind within ten minutes. It’s for the folks who like that specific, dusty sound of 1930s recording equipment where everything has a slight hiss to it.

Arthur Tracy is the whole show here. He’s got that voice that sounds like honey poured over gravel, but man, he’s not an actor. He spends most of the runtime looking slightly confused, like he’s waiting for someone to hand him a sandwich or tell him where the exit is. It’s kind of endearing in a weird way, I guess? 🎤

There’s this one sequence where he just stands there singing, and the camera doesn't move for what feels like a literal century. You start noticing the wallpaper patterns. Then you notice the shadow of a microphone stand that wasn't supposed to be in the frame. It’s that kind of movie. It feels like a rough draft of a film that someone forgot to finish editing.

It definitely lacks the polish you'd find in something like Piccadilly, which at least had a sense of style to hide its gaps. Reaching for the Moon doesn't hide anything. It’s just nakedly simple, almost to a fault. It makes some of those other shorts, like Kiddie Revue, feel like high-budget epics by comparison.

Notes from the couch:

• The lighting changes randomly during one song. Nobody cared.
• I think I saw a stagehand’s elbow in the bottom right corner at 22 minutes.
• The piano player seems to be in a completely different movie than the singer.
• My coffee went cold halfway through, and I didn't even notice because I was busy staring at the weird curtains.

The pacing is just... nonexistent. Scenes start when they start, and they end whenever Arthur runs out of breath. There’s no urgency. It’s just a collection of songs glued together with some very thin conversational bits. If you took out the music, you’d have about four minutes of movie left. Maybe that would have been better? 🤷‍♂️

It’s not offensive, just incredibly light. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a glass of lukewarm water. You drink it, you’re not thirsty anymore, but you certainly didn't enjoy the experience. Sometimes I wonder if these people knew they were making something that would be watched almost a hundred years later. Probably not.

If you're feeling adventurous, compare this to the vibe in The City of Beautiful Nonsense, which at least tries to build a world. This one? It’s just a stage, a guy, and a song. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.