Sky Captain

I finally saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and I have to say I was both disappointed and I can't get it out of my head.

I love art deco, I love old serials, and I love Spitfire aircraft, so at some fundamental level I should have been the ideal audience for such a film. But at the core of this love comes from the love of specific films and shows (all highly recommended): "The Maltese Falcon" for its visual appeal and tight plot, "Zorro" serial for its astounding cliffhangers, the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serial for its hilarious-yet-deadly-earnest thrills, "The Awful Truth" for its machinegun banter, and of course "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for binding it all together in something better than most of its source material.

There is plenty of shlock from the same eras, including screwball comedies that aren't particuarly screwy but instead snide, science fiction movies so slow and stupid they hurt, and any number of baffling and plotless serials like "Radar Men from the Moon".

So, when you go off to make an homage/lift/steal from such sources, to appeal to me you have to be sure to steal the best stuff and then wind it into something very good. What's happened here is that director Kerry Conran has stolen tons of stuff including really great art direction, but also stolen some of the cruddiness, too. Sky Captain himself is more smarmy than heroic (a common problem from the serials and golden age comics), the plot rambles along to a big bang but no real coherency (see: Radar Men), and the banter between Sky Captain and his Best Girl Polly (plucky reporter) doesn't soar.

In a way, the script isn't the problem, though; you could have just as aimless a plot (see: Steven Sommers and "The Mummy") and still had great banter (see also: Steven Sommers and "Deep Rising"). All throughout, there are some great comebacks worthy of a Bacall put-down delivery or a Clark Gable grin. However, the performances aren't always very consistent, and the lines don't come ripping towards you like "The Awful Truth" or get cut together with sharp visuals like the classroom explanation of the Ark of the Covenant from "Raiders". Instead, we get long takes of Sky Captain moodily piloting the plane while Polly entertains herself in the backseat with exposition. At some point Jude Law and Gwyenneth Paltrow get used to one another and find the rhythm of the lines and it all gets much better, but during the long middle hour the exposition just sucks and doesn't really take us where we need to go.

So, it's easy to decide to hate this film, any more than you can sit down with a Hardy Boys book and hate the plot or read a 1950s-era Superman comic and think that Supes is sort of a cad. But, boy, it sure looks fantastic. Even 24 hours after seeing the film, my head is filled with Spitfires with Flying Tigers paintjobs, uniformed Angelina Jolee aboard a truly surprising airship, and those really big robots with the skulls on their chests crushing New York.