‘Captain’ surpasses high rank
4 out of 5 stars
If I were a circa-1930s British youth huddled in a subway station to avoid Nazi air raids on London, ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’ would be my favorite movie ever.
Since I have never even visited England and only met one Nazi in my lifetime, ‘Sky Captain’ takes a serious hit. The period piece, which takes the bold move of filming Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Angelina Jolie exclusively in front of blue screens, lives and dies by the sword of total homage.
On one hand, the fuzzy, Saturday morning serial look seamlessly melds with Paltrow’s brassy dialogue and Law’s square-jawed hero stares. These succeed, playing on the same timeless themes that made impressionable young lads nationwide get yelled at for whipping their cat and calling themselves Dr. Jones. Unfortunately, in the interest of not half-steppin’, Director Kerry Conran packs the opening half-hour with more annoying dissolves and heavy-handed, stylistic exposition than a gag reel of vintage Superman cartoons.
The casting, however, is not perfect from opening frame to closing credit. Alongside the marquee names, Giovanni Ribisi (‘Boiler Room’) and Michael Gambon (the new Albus Dumbledore of the ‘Harry Potter’ series) each expertly fill the stock characters of a bright-eyed wunderkind and an overprotective newspaper editor, respectively. Jolie, though, does not fare too well in the screen-time department, being relegated to the last quarter of the movie. And even then you could probably count her lines on your hands and toes.
The real heat of the film is generated through the chemistry of Law and Paltrow. The pair perfectly execute the dynamic between globe-trotting super pilot and the precocious reporter who once loved him. Without their expert comic timing and ability to shoot a longing glance with actual emotion, the entire project could have slid from loving imitation to laughable parody.
It is an unwritten rule that sequels that are better than the original succeed because they don’t need to introduce the characters again-as soon as the opening credits end it is full tilt boogie. This works for ‘Sky Captain’ because, as a serial, there is little-to-no exposition whatsoever.
This idea, like the movie itself, is a gamble. It was a gamble to use no actual sets, a gamble that a contemporary audience can handle a bygone era of trench coats and worries of a second world war, and a gamble that even with three ‘name’ actors that it will be accepted by a public that made ‘Resident Evil: Apocalypse’ the top movie in the country.
Even without the German bombardiers and cockney accents, the gamble pays off.
Published on September 16, 2004 at 12:00 pm