Director : Kerry Conran Starring : Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Angelina Jolie Trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Official trailer (Quicktime) (www.apple.com) Moviecentre.net - Various Trailers (www.moviecentre.net) More Movie Reviews...

What a curious thing Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is. With its remarkable visuals and embrace of the artificial, it's like a ViewMaster slide sprung to life. Unfortunately, the characters and the plot are about as clunky as the viewer itself. One can almost hear the "ker-chunk" of the handle being depressed every time a scene changes.

The plot is a collage of old serials (one can imagine George Lucas getting a tremendous charge out it) wherein repoter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is hot on the story of missing scientists when gigantic robots land in Metropolis. They appear to be after generators (this, by the way, makes ZERO sense in retrospect) but they're crushing a lot of vintage cars in the process. Swooping in to save the day is Joe `Sky Captain' Sullivan (Jude Law) in his vintage plane. After saving Polly he flies to his secret mountain lair located in a remote wilderness about two hours out of the city. There he discusses with Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi, lacking pluck) who may be doing this and why. It seems that a sinister doctor Totenkopf (Sir Laurence Olivier--don't ask) is doing something mysterious off of Tibet, or Atlantis, or Shangri-La. Along the way he enlists the help of former fling and now British commander "Franky" Cook (Angelina Jolie, wearing an eye patch and thus allowing me to scratch off #43 on my "Things I Really Hope I Get to See Angelina Jolie Do Before I Die" list).

But it wasn't this wacky plot that kept me from getting engaged with Sky Captain. It was that every five minutes or so I had to keep saying to myself, "NONE of this real. None of it." Well, except for Angelina in her little commander's uniform. That was real, dammit. As has been reported exhaustively, in every outlet that decided that Bernie Mac wasn't going to sell magazines, nearly the entire film (backdrops, props, monsters, plants, lakes, cityscapes) was created in a computer. The actors showed up and hit their marks in front of a blue/green screen. And this film truly is a visual marvel, a work of complete love and devotion. If every moment of a moviegoing experience is going to be manipulated, this is a good way to do it. The textures, something that CGI movies have improved on the most in the last several years, are done so well, you feel, at times, like you're being toyed with. "Aw, they made that foreground desk gauzy so I wouldn't pay attention to the fact that there is no airplane hangar there!" It's so well-crafted that it becomes a distraction.

Or, perhaps it's just more interesting than the characters in Sky Captain. They make Cliff Secord, the main character in The Rocketeer, look like he was crafted by Chekov, in comparison. I don't blame the technique but rather the insistence on the gee-whiz plot and the rush to get to the next destination. The mine sequence from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was originally meant for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The boys lost it, though, when it proved to be just another set piece, rather than integral to the exciting story. Writer/director Kerry Conran seems to have included everything in Sky Cap, including a sunken ship called "The Venture," the ship that brought King Kong to New York. Good on you, Mr. Coran, and try again. But here you've whipped up a great big ball of cotton candy, it's about as pretty and about as substantial.