Back in 1966, The Royal Guardsmen scored a hit with a minor novelty classic called “Snoopy and the Red Baron” about the imaginary World War I exploits dreamed up by Charlie Brown’s beagle. I bring this up because in FLYBOYS, one of the American pilots fighting World War I in the Lafayette Escadrille has the surname “Beagle” and if that’s an intentional reference to the Peanuts character, then it is the only clever thing in the entire film.
James Franco has been tasked with carrying this bloated bit of effluvia. He plays that most iconic of Americans, a cowboy, and as one of the new kids at the aerodrome in Verdun, he’s raring to save France from the Germans in 1916. Inspired by a newsreel of the dogfights over the French countryside, and a timely bit of advice from the peace officer with an arrest warrant for him brings he joins the usual motley crew of volunteers who have nothing in common, but learn to love each other anyway. There’s the rich kid who wants to prove himself to his father. There’s the idealistic kid from the prairie who wants to come home a hero. There’s the black guy who fled America years ago for a better life in France and wants to pay his adopted country back for its less severe racism, and there’s the kid who makes everyone suspicious about his loyalties. In due course, they will insult and offend each other,then reconcile only to be brought up short when a dark secret about one of them is revealed. Of course Franco’s character, who speaks no French, will find a little romance with a local girl, who speaks no English, but who will become startlingly proficient just a couple of weeks.
These stock characters go through their stock situations with all the élan of flat champagne from a lesser vineyard from an off year. There’s the scene where the dogfight veterans won’t let them into the camp’s bar because they haven’t scored their first kill. There’s the scene where the American ace with a gazillion kills talks down to them. There’s the scene where one of them has a nervous breakdown. There’s the scene where the crusty French commander (Jean Reno completely wasted here) grudgingly comes around to respecting his charges. There’s the scene where our hero discovers that there might not be any honor in warfare. There are the countless scenes of the arrogant Germans sneering at the Allies just before shooting them down. There’s the scene where his pet lion scares the bejeezus out of the new guys. Okay, that’s not a stock situation, but with the stale storyline, wooden acting, and plodding direction at work here, it plays like one. Not that it’s a total waste of time, though. The lion does the best acting in the entire film.
As for the dogfights, would that there was something to recommend them. Sure, the planes buzz around each other doing loop-the-loops and tailspins, but the pilot or pilots about to take that final nosedive into eternity is telegraphed so blatantly that there are no real surprises, and there’s nothing in the way the sequences are shot to make them rousing. This film goes so far as to blow up a zeppelin and still can’t get any adrenalin rushing, even with dozens of biplanes buzzing it as dozens of triplanes buzz the biplanes, and one guy invents the kamikaze maneuver a couple of decades before the real thing came along.
The best way to sum up the FLYBOYS experience is “quaint” and I don’t mean that in a good way. Made up of a random hodge-podge of bits and pieces from every war film ever made, and not the best bits and pieces, either, it’s all kitsch and zero charm.
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