Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I was able to secure a couple tickets to preview screening of this movie yesterday at the Cinerama theater. Overall I found the movie quite enjoyable; I'd give it about three out of four stars.

If you've seen the trailer for the movie, then you know pretty much everything you need to know before seeing this movie. A sci-fi adventure story using 30's technology and a 30's serial storytelling sytle. The picture has even been retouched by computer to give it a soft 30's quality. The plot is engaging, paying homage to everything from Metropolis to Star Wars. What really made the movie for me, though, was the interplay and one-liners between Jude Law (the Sky Captain himself) and Gwenyth Paltrow (newspaper reporter Polly Perkins). The humor they brought to the movie made up nicely for the plot holes, predicatability, and constant theft of other movie moments.

The reason I would give the movie three out of four stars is the aforementioned problems with the movie; it's very predictable as it lurches from cliche to cliche. There are plot holes and an almost unrelenting theft of material from other genre movies. I counted about a dozen thefts from Star Wars and Indiana Jones combined. The movie is fun, just not particularly surprising. You should definately spend your movie dollars on a film like Hero before seeing Sky Captain.