Review: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Rated PG | 107 mins

Walking into Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, I was ready for some good, clean fun. It promised to be a PG-rated movie with an A-list cast and an interesting style. Who thought that such a concept would lead to a resulting product as atrocious as this movie turned out being?

Sky Captain was filmed entirely on blue-screens; the cast had to envision everything happening around them, as they acted each scene out. The movie is full of big explosions, action, and adventure. Its mood is ambitious and director Kerry Conran creates a picturesque look of a fantasized 1930’s, via CGI. On paper, my description makes Sky Captain sound like a movie-lover’s dream. Too bad it is so insanely boring.

This all goes without mentioning that the film is a style-over-substance extravaganza. This technique can work, when done correctly. Unfortunately, Sky Captain doesn’t have any interesting sense of style. Yes, gazing at the entrancing, bleak visuals is breathtaking, for about thirty minutes, but after that, the look and feel of the movie began to wear on me. It could’ve been saved by a strong story with interesting characters, but those are two assets that Conran clearly feels are unnecessary.

Some have compared Sky Captain to some of the Batman sequels (probably because they share Gotham City as the setting), but I think that would be too generous. I think that viewing Sky Captain is most similar to the experience of watching another person play “Star Fox” on Nintendo 64. I heard Conran’s rumble-pack vibrating during Sky Captain, as he pushed the A and B buttons rapidly on his controller, but the euphoria he experienced making it was clearly much more enlightening than any emotion I felt, when watching it. I can see why it would be fun to plug a CGI robot into the middle of Gotham City, but I was not enthralled, in the least, by looking at one doing such.

The very little story that Sky Captain boasts having isn’t involving. The plot chronicles Sky Captain Joe Sullivan (Jude Law) and his ex-girlfriend, reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), as they try to stop Dr. Totenkopf, a German scientist, from succeeding in his plans of world-domination. And, then, uh, well, that’s pretty much it. During the first thirty minutes of the movie, the idea seemed intriguing to me, but Sky Captain gradually declines, until it hits an abominable low-point at the end of the second act. Even the apparently fun, nostalgic final fifth seemed only mildly amusing to me, after enduring the snooze-inducing majority of the film. Sky Captain may have worked if it was a short-film, but as a seventy-million-dollar-budgeted “extravaganza,” it stands for nothing more (and, really, nothing less) than a failed experiment in mainstream filmmaking.

I’m not sure if the clouded visuals, which only lunatics will refer to as “dream-like”, covered up the emotions of all of the actors, or if the cast’s work is just plain awful. I can respect leads Paltrow and Law for their daringness, in playing parts, with no sets or major props surrounding them, but that does not excuse their lack of energy. The role of Sky Captain should be an exuberant one; Law barely even manages to change the tone in his voice, on occasion. Imagine what people would’ve thought of Star Wars had Luke Skywalker acted as if he did not care about the outcome of the story. Sky Captain seems like he doesn’t care about Totenkopf; he is just another aimless soul in Conran’s distorted vision. Thankfully, this movie doesn’t represent part one of a trilogy, as Lucas’ masterpiece did. At least supporter Angelina Jolie is able to muster up some adrenaline in her part, albeit eye-rolling.

When I flipped on my television two nights ago, I was informed that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is, currently, the most fun movie of the year. There are two possible explanations for this comment. (1) The commercial-narrator needs to be placed in a mental facility or (2) The film industry is desperately lacking in the fun department. While I think both are very true, the second seems more accurate. Yawn.