Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: B
BY PATRICIA DRAZNIN
I watched this film with curiosity and awe. In the awe category, the
movie’s stylized vision of old Manhattan is transporting, seductive,
and, well, awesome. The soft outlines and muted sepia tones rewind us
back to the 1930s. And the opening scenes in the newspaper office with
reporter Polly Perkins in her vintage fashion create the familiar gumshoe
setting that made me expect Humphrey Bogart to walk through the door.
This computer-generated feast of nostalgia comes compliments of writer/director
Kerry Conran, who spent years on his Macintosh generating a brief sequence
of robotic giants invading Manhattan, which he later expanded into this
feature-length film.
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Polly Perkins, the feisty news reporter who will
do anything to capture a story. And played by Jude Law, superhero Joe “Sky
Captain” Sullivan fearlessly defends Manhattan from the skies.
I found Paltrow and Law enjoyable but a little too mild. Two people
with stronger chemistry and more attitude would have beefed up the prospect
of sweeping me away.
To describe Sky Captain’s complex story would take more words
than the actual screenplay. Conran’s plot ricochets in surprising
directions mirroring disparate themes of old classics, but leaving us
struggling to recall the original premise. It also incorporates all
of the essentials: the suave superhero with his sassy love interest
and his super-tech sidekick, the mad scientist with his end-of-the-world
machine with the large emergency button, and of course, the pencil-thin
bridge across the infinite void that the hero must cross to save the
world.
So here comes the curiosity question of why a potentially extraordinary
film would resort to a trite script. The answer is that Sky
Captain is a deliberate cliché attempting to make fun of itself and the
genre. But it falls just short. Conran makes the mistake of flirting
with parody instead of making a loud Mike Myers kind of statement, so
the audience doesn’t know whether to laugh or take it seriously.
With so much going for it, Sky Captain almost works. It just needs to
take a bolder stand. Before the next installment, Conran should watch
Austin Powers to see how it’s done.
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