09.20.04
Movie Review: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Are the giant robots attacking Manhattan somehow related to the disappearance of the world’s top scientists? Only flying mercenary Sky Captain and (not very) intrepid girl-reporter Polly Perkins can uncover the truth! The movie is basically a high-tech riff on a low-tech theme: the actors staged their scenes against a blue screen, and instead of using matte paintings, computers later animated the world around them. And what a world it is! Sky Captain boasts the most beautiful production design of any movie in recent memory. Nominally set in 1939, it takes Art Deco design to the nth degree in every detail. It’s the 1930s only better! (And isn’t that what the Depression really needed to spruce things up- a uranium mine shaped like the 1939 New York World’s Fair?)

Unfortunately writer/director Kerry Conran and company are just a little too content to let the audience gaze upon its beauteousness. (One gorgeous shot of Gwyneth Paltrow’s hair tumbling around as the plane turns upside down is used twice, and we are happy to see it.) The plot, like the production design, draws heavily on Tom Swift books and old issues of Popular Science magazine. So, it looks pretty, but even Sir Laurence Olivier’s Giant Floating Head can’t really make much of the plot or the dialogue, most of which is of the exclamatory variety. “We went underwater!” when the plane goes underwater. “They’re everywhere!” when there are, indeed, giant robots everywhere. Angelina Jolie alerts the Amphibious Squad by shouting “Alert the Amphibious Squad!” And so on.

It’s also hard to believe that Jude Law would go off into the sunset with Gwyneth Paltrow, whose role consists mostly of fumbling around and breaking things, over Angelina Jolie, who commands the entire British fleet and has a sexy eye-patch.

But, darn it, it’s really hard to hate a movie with so many zeppelins in it.