"Join the Resistance"

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004): 7/10

Poster (c) Paramount Pictures

What convinced the struggling studio Paramount to give a first time director $70 million to direct a film that he wrote? It surely wouldn't be the script that Kerry Conran wrote for his film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. His script is generic and seems dated. And it wouldn't be Conran's directing style, because Sky Captain is his feature debut. It's simply because of a six-minute short film that Conran created. It's completely computer generated, and shows robots destroying New York City. And because of it, Conran got more than enough money to create a completely computer animated movie, with only the actors and a sparse few props being filmed in front of a green screen (or is it blue?). Is it a gimmick? Sure, but it's a hell of a gimmick, one with almost non-stop action, which blows your mind when you think that it looks real, when it isn't.

A bunch of scientists go missing, as intrepid reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) (isn't it a little TOO obvious of a throwback to comic books with the name?) covers the story. Giant robots (obviously made by the kidnapped scientists) partially destroy New York, as Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Jude Law) stops them. Sky Captain and Polly go try to solve the mystery of the missing scientists. Popping their heads in along the way are Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie) and Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi) for various reasons, both in too-small roles.

The visuals are spectacular. For the first part, when they're in the city, it almost looks monochromatic, when it isn't. It's the look that is minutely obvious that it's fake, but still looks incredibly real, something along the lines of Shrek's animation, except it looks like 60 years ago. The references are all there, and it does work very well. The actors almost seem to be computer generated themselves, adding to the overall look of the movie. And then once the action leaves the city, the effects don't look as radical, since it's not things we see every day. Sky Captain's airplane may be cool, but it doesn't compare to what we saw earlier in the film.

Quid pro quo: the downside of all of these special effects is the plot, specifically the characters. Jolie's character is completely undefined, and Paltrow's is too annoying and stupid to be likable. I'm assuming that this line will soon become notorious for its stupidity: when they go underwater in Sky Captain's place, Polly says, "We're underwater!" And Sky Captain doesn't really have enough time to be developed, although the relationship was well-defined. The plot is completely absurd and makes no sense once you think about it. And how is Totenkopf played by Laurence Olivier? He does absolutely nothing in the movie. He's referred to, but does nothing. It seems like at times Conran was so grateful that he's directing a $70 million movie that he forgot that the old time serials also had plots. He's not in love with his material, he's just a giddy film schoolboy who's just excited to make his first feature like this.

Paltrow comes off worst of the three main actors. She can't really handle being in front of a green screen, and therefore doesn't really know how to act. Plus, there's that aforementioned "underwater" line. Law acts like the epitome of cool his character could be with more development, and Jolie's getting a paycheck, that's all. Sky Captain is far from perfect, but as a technical achievement-and a debut one, too-it really stands out against the mediocrity that's been put out this year.

Rated PG for sequences of stylized sci-fi violence and brief mild language.

Review Date: September 18, 2004