Sky Captain and the Blue Screen Horror World of Yesteryear
By Tom Dempster
Nostalgia or homage flicks or throwback movies usually leave me feeling as
neutral and blasé as I was when I set foot into the movie house. From
time to time, I get a pleasant surprise. Maybe some element of the movie will
pinch my right butt cheek with a nifty allusion that I and three other people
in the movie theater would get. Or some cameo appearance would help bolster
some intertextual relationship re-existing in the movie. Or, perhaps, stock
footage or some special effect may grab my movie-viewing cajones and give
‘em a good twist.
This is what good throwback flicks do, anyhow. Or what they should do given
the chance.
I expected a little too from “Sky Captain.” Not that I expected
anything but a disappointment, of course, but I left the film nauseous and
even more listless than when I went in.
Sycophantic horse flop? This movie has enough to fertilize Unctuous Fields
forever. How about that grainy footage of Laurence Olivier as the bad guy?
What? Jeremy Irons turned it down? So did James Spader? Well, for good reason.
They probably god fed up with all of the original Batman comics allusions.
Frankly, I don’t like getting slapped upside the face with things like
a town named “Gotham,” or characters named “Bruce,”
Lois,” “Albert”… I also grow weary of doomsday devices
and cheap blue-screen effects.
A set, a prop, a better script could have made this film even slightly better
than it was. Jude, Gwyneth – folks – I know you don’t have
much to work with in terms of dialogue (“He has a doomsday device!”
“We must stop him!”), but jumping jesus on a pogo stick –
if either of you were acting any less hard, you’d be corpses. Laurence
–is- a corpse, and even in poorly employed footage culled from a number
of his previous films, and still managed to out act all of the warm bodies
on the set. I blame the blue-screen. The entire film was based on a short
using no-name actors and CG like crazy. The short film, available on iflim
dot com, is actually decent for what it is – a retro-futuristic romp
to save the world. The best part? It lasts only six minutes, and that’s
about all the patience I have for “Sky Captain.” They stretched
6 minutes into 96, and frankly, that’s 97 too many.
And speaking of warm bodies:
Angelina, honey, go home. Billy Bob needs you for his next shitty album. Yes,
you’re alluring. Yes, you have hips and breasts more pert and ample
than Venus di Milo. This doesn’t mean your acting is any good. This
applies to other movies, but largely “Beyond Borders.”
My advice is to save your eight or ten dollars. Wait for it to show up on
the WB affiliate on a Sunday at 2 in the afternoon. That way, you can leave
whenever you want. Or, you could save yourself the trouble and carry through
with what the producers and directors for “Sky Captain” probably
had in mind: have a few shots of bourbon, put on “Blade Runner”
with the sound off, read Batman number 4, and put on a Brahms symphony of
your choice. You may actually get something out of it.
Ratings or stars or what? Ehh – we’ll say: I won’t bother.
I, for one, have already wasted too much energy on this atrocity of cinema.