Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - two and a half stas. Directed and written by Kerry ConranStarring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina JolieClassification: PG
This is a curious case of love only at first sight. In the initial blush of discovery, the picture seems wonderful, and so does its paradox. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a nostalgic look at the future -- yesterday's sci-fi run through today's computer, Buck Rogers re-animated by the lap-top crowd. Reversing the current trend that turns comic books into movies, director Kerry Conran has summoned all his digital magic to turn a movie back into a comic book. And he succeeds, perhaps a little too well. The opening frames are drop-dead gorgeous, and the effect is thrilling -- until it isn't. Ninety minutes later, a certain admiration lingers but the thrill is gone. Magic, it appears, has a cruelly short expiry date.
For now, let's stick with the exciting start, and with Conran's own intriguing backstory. Once upon a time, as a hermit holed up with his Mac, he hatched an idea for a uniquely computerized flick and, long years later, had only six minutes of hard-earned video to show for it. But those precious minutes caught the eye of Hollywood, and you can easily see why.
The place is New York and the time is, and isn't, 1939 -- actually, it's the future as imagined in 1939. So, while plump snow flakes fall from the night sky, a vast zeppelin drifts languidly into its moor high atop the Empire State Building. We move from the silver of the blimp to the silver of the screen, where The Wizard of Oz is enjoying its first run at a deco palace. Cut to the metallic whir of a printing press, and the blare of the newspaper headline: Top Scientists Dead. That dark note is the preface to an ominous rumble, and a steel army appears on the horizon, distant and then closer, ever closer -- giant robots invading Manhattan, the shine of their immense jackboots glinting off the moonlit streets.
Shot entirely in a computer, this whole sequence has a muted beauty. Cinematically, Conran is paying homage to the team of Welles and Wells -- a large nod to Orson, a smaller gesture to H.G. Visually, his debt is to the pulpy atmospherics of noirish comics -- the palette is sepia-toned, all deep browns and murky greys. And, thematically, it delves neatly into the era's chasmic divisions. When an emergency call is put out to the "Sky Captain," and our pilot-hero flies to the rescue in his ferociously sleek plane, the schizoid spirit of the age is perfectly caught -- it's the machine to save us from machines, the science to deliver us from science.
Yes, the start is no less than awesome (can that word be redeemed?). And everything on view -- buildings, blimps, snowflakes, clouds, deco theatres, deathly invaders -- is a digital effect. Everything, that is, except the actors, who were left to do their human work in a physical vacuum, playing only to the emptiness of a blue screen -- good actors like Jude Law as the manly Captain, Giovanni Ribisi as his little genius sidekick, Gwyneth Paltrow as the presiding love interest and spunky gal reporter (Polly Perkins in this alliterative version). It's their job to carry on even when the thrill wears off -- specifically, when the plot gears up and the yarn winds down into the stock banalities of your typical pulp serial.
You know the drill: Somewhere a mad scientist (German, of course) is imperilling the planet, prompting Cap and lass to soar off in full saviour mode -- over the digitalized Himalayas, on to a digitalized Shangri-La, deep into a digitalized ocean, up again to the digitalized lair of the evil one. En route, cliff-hanging adventures unfold at clocked intervals, punctuated by the usual commas of thin comedy. But Conran is losing his subtle touch -- despite the computerized gymnastics, too many of these action sequences feel rote and cluttered. And too often the actors appear unwedded to the effects, not to mention to each other. Drowned in all that sepia, and perhaps numbed by the damn blue screen, their performances seem unfocussed and blurred at the edges. The sole exception is Angelina Jolie who, playing some sort of war-savvy aviatrix complete with sexy eye-patch, is shrewd enough to upstage the visual competition with a vocal gimmick -- she spits out her lines in the clipped accent of an RAF officer barking orders at a full-dress parade. Jolly good, Angelina.
At this late stage, as our intrepid souls parachute into the final frame, the verdict is clear: What began as a fascinating six-minute film has pretty much stayed that way. Hollywood liberated Conran from his solitary vigil only to burden him with a fat budget and feature expectations. So encumbered, he lost his way -- or, to be more precise, found his fresh technique stumbling down a stale narrative path. Consequently, what begins as childlike and filled with wonder ends as childish and fraught with tedium. There's fleeting greatness in Sky Captain, and then it's just Goodbye Captain.