SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

Rating: 4

The most amazing thing about SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is that the art direction isn’t the end of the story. Using sets created digitally and added to footage of actors emoting in front of a blue screen, writer/director Kerry Conran has fashioned an eye-popping roller coaster of a film that is a glorious evocation a golden age of filmmaking that should have been. It’s equal parts German expressionism and cliff-hanging adventure yarn with just a dash of Buck Rogers and maybe a soupcon of Star Wars.
Sky Captain is Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), the unflappable, impossibly stalwart leader of his own private air force and the world of tomorrow is the work of a mad scientist plotting to, what else, destroy the world. That the mad scientist is played by Laurence Olivier as he looked in the late 1930s, the time-frame of the action, is a piquant touch that speaks well of both the writer’s imagination and the special effects used throughout.
Back to Joe. When New York City is attacked by a marauding band of 10-story-tall flying robots equipped with death rays and an appetite for generators, the authorities call him and his fly boys in to put an end to the mayhem. They do, but there’s more mayhem to be dealt with from the metal men as their attacks turn global. It all eventually leads him, his old flame, ace reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), whose on the trail of a group of missing not-mad scientists, on a journey from the mysterious high plateau of Nepal, complete with a hidden civilization, to a lost island where more than just mosquitoes lurk.
Conran hasn’t forgotten that the most important reason for making a film of this nature is to have fun, the which he has accomplished. There is the snappy dialogue that acknowledges its origins in corn but transcends it, becoming retro yet fresh. There are the impossibly glamorous stars, Law is debonair, whether flying a Spitfire or swigging Milk of Magnesia. There are the colorful supporting characters. There’s Angelina Jolie, despite her star billing, as Joe’s other ex-flame, a cool daredevil in an eye-patch and form-fitting uniform in charge of her own flying squadron. There’s Giovanni Ribisi, who almost steals the film, as Joe’s boy genius, a gum-smacking proto-nerd equally enamored of spiffy gadgets, ray guns, and comic books.
Law plays the heroism as non-ironic, but with just a glimmer of that little boy who never quite got over his first awe-struck look at an airplane. Paltrow is the weak link. She looks great in the period gear, but the attitude, which should be a hard-nosed spunkiness, is more sloe-eyed blasé that seems bored even when being spun around in a plane. Her voice is a monotone that wavers, slightly, between a whine and a yawn. Plus, in a film that calls for a great deal of running, she is oddly gawky at it, the action a peculiar non-synchronous exercise during which she seems about to topple precipitously at any moment.
Back to the good stuff. Even without the sepia-toned color that was added in post-production, this would be a whiz-bang good time. The rest, as we used to say in Louisiana, is lagniappe. Each frame of film is suffused with a moody indirect lighting that produces luminescent highlights amid the deeply etched shadows. The robots might have emerged from the troubled imaginings of H.G. Wells or Brancusi, some moving with a thunderous shuffle through city streets, others flying like liquid metal across the sky. Heroic deco buildings give way to kitchy Chinoiserie with out missing a beat.
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is a flight of fantasy that hurtles along with breathless wonder. The leading lady’s stockings never run and the leading man’s trousers always have a sharp crease, even in the most humid of jungles. The title is a nod to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, also dubbed The World of Tomorrow. Conran, though, has done the Fair one better, he’s brought its vision of things to come to magical life in a way that even visionaries back then couldn’t have imagined.