Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Sky Captain & World Of Tomorrow (DVD))

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Sky Captain & World Of Tomorrow (DVD)
Date:	13/01/07 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great use of "artistic" CGI, nostalgia feeling, perfect score

Disadvantages: Bad acting, non-existent plot, too heavy on action (but then what were you expecting?)

(Basically a film only review, but I’m not really sure)

CGI has in a fairly short time really taken up quality wise from the early computer generated special effects of the 1980s in basically bringing to life sights that would be impossible to create with sets, miniatures or make-up (at least not convincingly or without spending a lot of dosh on them). Therefore it has become almost commonplace on movies to employ CGI effects to create whatever images the director has in his mind, though even here we can’t escape from the fact that the effects are being first and foremost created by humans and their skill in using their tools will vary, so effects can either seem truly eye-popping or they may seem fake and really silly. Also the big problem with CGI in recent times has been how some visualistically beautiful movies have been created at the expense of storytelling, rather trying to disguise the lack of a proper plot with stunning visuals and hoping that the audience will be properly awed in not paying attention to the film’s shortcomings.

One of the pinnacles of the wonders and flaws of CGI movies came in 2004 in the form of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The film’s origins came about when Kerry Conran & family put together a six-minute short using mostly nothing but computers, catching the interest of producer Jon Avnet who got suitably interested in the potential of the film’s premise. With a studio backing him up, Conran then began expanding the original short into a feature length film by using only the bare minimum of authentic objects and rendering everything else on his computers. Of course using blue and green screens is nothing new, but very few have taken mixing up CGI backgrounds and foregrounds with real life actors to quite such a level before on this scale (apart from the Star Wreck guys who did a feature length sci-fi film in very similar fashion over the course of ten years in their kitchen!).

As an actual movie that tells a story, though, it is here that we run into problems. Kerry Conran is a big fan of the nostalgic American Saturday morning TV shows and comic books of the 1940’s and 50’s, where dashing heroes fought evil in a futuristic world that resembled ours but had some fantastical twists to make them seem something completely different. The film takes place somewhere around the late 1930’s or early ‘40’s in a world where the future looks bright and where the Second World War is but a dream (though curiously they are continuously referring to the “First” World War, although there hasn’t even been a “Second”). The plot is really as simple as you would expect from a kiddies adventure serial from the 1930’s in having some mysterious villain called Dr. Totenkopf sending huge robots to steal some strangely eclectic objects from all over the world (like generators from New York) and at the same time kidnapping some high profile scientists for whatever purpose. Hot on the trail of Totenkopf is reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the dashing, Errol Flynn-esque Joe “Sky Captain” Sullivan (Jude Law) who travel across the globe in the customised P-40 Warhawk in order to (of course) save the entire world from destruction.

The plot really is as paperthin as that, and much of it hinges on big action scenes and the CGI scenery than any real attempt at making a coherent story out of the basic premise. With that in mind, the actual acting of the cast is suitably campy and wooden. None of the performances are really exceptional on any level, despite having some rather big names in the main roles, and character development is practically at a stand still. There is some quite funny little bickering between Joe and Polly about a past relationship in Nanging that runs throughout the film, basically consisting of Polly accusing Joe of cheating on her with another woman while Joe is accusing Polly of sabotaging his plane that resulted in his lengthy imprisonment. Also another running joke is with Polly and her camera, over which she seems almost suicidal in keeping safe, and when her film gets destroyed in one action outing, the fact she only has a couple of shots left becomes a big issue that continues right on to the very final scene. These little details offer much of the spice for the otherwise rather empty characters. The secondary cast is likewise rather underwhelming. Sharing a rather large credit is Angelina Jolie as Frankie Cooke, an old “buddy” of Joe’s and the commander of a top secret British flying fortress. Her role, despite being very visible on the posters, is really nothing more that a glorified cameo. She doesn’t make an appearance until half way to the movie and disappears shortly after (which is none too soon as far as I’m concerned). Also the boy-genius Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), a kind of a wunderkind who comes up with various inventions like a blaster gun and other stuff ripped straight out of Buck Rogers, is very much a stereotype of the “jee wiz, mister! A quarter!” type newspaperseller kid of American pop culture.

But then again, the plot or acting was never the “important” thing in the movie, rather than the visual side (Conran is more a visualist than a story teller). And this certainly shows. The visuals are truly stunning, though a far cry from even attempting to be realistic. All of the CGI scenery has been given a sort of hazy and blurred visualistic sensibility that is heavy on shadows and old-fashioned patina, while the more nature-oriented scenes are blessed with a lot of colourful vibrancy. This does give the film a distinctly artistic perspective that is very well represented in the very first scene in the movie of the zeppelin Hindenburg III’s docking with the Empire State Building that remains one of the most satisfying scenes in the entire film and perfectly sets the era and setting of what is to follow. Likewise the usage of old footage of the deceased Laurence Olivier is wrapped around all kinds of filters to bring him back to life in order to portray Dr. Totenkopf in one scene and is even given acting credit in the titles. It’s pretty hokey, but if you can do it, then why not. To stamp a seal on the adventure serial genre is finally the suitably over the top score of Edward Shearmur who creates some wonderfully adventuresome music in the vein of Hollywood’s Golden Age of Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Ultimately, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a film that functions at the very basic level of an adventure serial, a film that has a plot filled with holes for you and your friend to peek through and say “pick-a-boo,” acting that is marginally functional but nothing truly memorable, and has characters that are verbatim copied from the iconic heroes of the 1930’s comic books. And still, despite being an extremely flawed film, there is just something in it that renders a nostalgic charm of innocence and derring-do that was something American children in the 50’s grew up believing in, making it very much a guilty pleasure, perfectly emphasised by the end credits song of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. How much that charm actually strikes non-Americans is debatable, but the visually artistic look of sumptuous eye-candy for once really adds to the film in taking a step away from even trying to make a truly believable look for the film instead of the more fantasy oriented stylishness. Personally I found the style-over-substance approach to actually make the film quite enjoyable, as a more realistic touch would have made the incredibly pedantic plot too heavy and jump too much in your face. On the flipside the almost constant action number does have the tendency to get tiring in the long run, but then again I don’t suppose anybody is going to see this film for its subtlety. So as a film it gets a very standard *** rating, but the visual beauty is enough to punch one extra * to the title. Just as long as you don’t get up hoping much in the line of a coherent story, then you’ll be just fine.

Available from Amazon for £5.97 and for the two-disc affair, that contains a making of –feature, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and the original six-minute short, goes for £6.97. As an aside, I’d like to mention the commentary tracks, of which I can’t tell if there is a universal problem with it or if I just have a faulty copy, is that the sound often completely dropped off for minutes on end. But as far as I can tell, there was nothing really of great interest in them, particularly in the makers commentary which (the little I managed to hear) was basically nothing but “this was fake”, “he’s not looking at anything”, “that was computer generated” and “that table’s not really there”.

Rating as a film: ***
Rating as a visualistic extravaganza: ****

© berlioz, 2007

Summary: The American serial brough well back to life, though the type is perhaps too dated for today