October 14, 2004

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I went into this movie just knowing I was going to have a good time and I certainly was not disappointed.

Ok so the plot wasn't exactly substantial but it wasn't paper thin either, it fit the style of the movie I thought. The special effects (and by that I mean every scene in the movie) just blew me completely away. I don't know how to convey that feeling, I mean during the production of the movie I watched it come along quite a bit, if you want to know what I'm talking about with these effects the best way to experience it is to watch some clips of scenes pre effects, it's literally just the actors a couple of props and a tremendous amount of blue screen. The backgrounds look very cool and stylistic along with that the actual picture has an overexposed feel to the color which is really I believe whats adds to the style of the look.

If I had to pick apart anything in the movie it would be small things, I read in one review that Gwyneth Paltrow's performance would have been great if she had changed her accent. I think I agree with that assessment, Gwyneth did a wonderful job with the acting but at times her cadence more so than her voice seemed a little bit out of the period the film was set in. I also heard some people complain about Angelina Jolie's British accent but personally I didn't think it was so far off that it warrants complaint.

I suppose if you are a real nitpicker and have to have your movies all follow the same set of "rules" to be hits you would have to say the Plot is a bit shallow and jumps around just a bit, there is a surprise or two that didn't have any foreshadowing to let you guess at them and you could also say the acting was a bit off. However if you look at this movie for what it really is, which is a big budget adaption of a throwback to the fiction (comic books, writings, etc...) of the past (say around the 1930's). In that aspect I belive Sky Captain just works.

Bottom line, if you have an open mind, if you enjoy just a good fun time, and if you can get past a few small hurdles I say Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a couple of hours worth of fun, and like I said if you see what it looked like to the actors as they filmed it and then you see what the final product looks like (or vice versa) you should be thoroughly impressed... Thumbs up I say.