Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

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Laurence Olivier is Dead; Long Live Laurence Olivier!

by Christian De Matteo

Super

            Finally, I have seen Sky Captain.  I’ve not been to the movies in some time due to a ridiculously busy social life schedule because everyone I know is tying the knot for no apparent reason.  So, after a mild, movie-withdrawal induced freak-out, I trotted my ass into Manhattan to see what all the fuss was about this Jude, Gweneth and Angelina flick.

           It frickin’ rocks.  I couldn’t possibly be more excited about this movie.  As soon as it ended I wanted to watch it again.  Let me say that it has been a helluva long time since I’ve sat down to watch a PG movie.  No sex, no violence, I’m generally not interested, with the exception of a Pixar movie or Shrek 1 or 2.  But live action?  No, I stay the hell away.  Sky Captain, however, is PG in the sense that there is no real profanity, nudity or gore.  There is however a heaping helping of straight-up Indiana Jones type action, slick, smart, tongue-in-cheek, 30s and 40s era dialogue and pure, unadulterated, 1950s sci-fi quirkiness.  All done in glorious CGI, which I certainly don’t always like (I give you the abomination that was The Hulk), recreating frickin’ laser beam eye having robots and Harryhausen-style almost but not literally, stop-motion puppet dinosaurs, and monsters.  Anything that looks crappy in Sky Captain is supposed to.

            Writer/director Kerry Conlan knows his stuff.  He knows his old sci-fi, he knows his way-back old serial heroes and heroines, and, just like Lucas and Spielberg before him, knows how to celebrate these great icons of American entertainment history.

DVD

****MILD SPOILERS****

            First and foremost, Sky Captain is the most tension free, silly suspense, complete giddy excitement filled film I’ve seen in years.  You are not going to be on the edge of your seats (except for once) wondering if a character is going to live.  They will.  You are not going to wonder if the good guys are going to win.  They will.  This is not the point.  The point is the giddy, quirky fun.  The point is not whether the science makes sense.  It doesn’t.  IT DOES, however, make sense with what was thought of as possibilities in 1950’s. 

 ****END SPOILERS****

 So is this the future?  Is this the past?  When the hell is this?

 Don’t worry.

 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow will make you feel like a kid again.  Remember that pure glee at seeing cool people doing cool things with cool villains and neat monsters… yeah, that.  It’ll come back about twenty minutes in and last till the end of this barely an hour and a half long movie.  If this giddy glee doesn’t return… get your money back from your therapist.

 And, oh yeah, Lawrence Olivier is in this.  No, really, alive and kicking.  Kinda.  Digitally resurrected, and used respectfully and brilliantly, Olivier graces, once again, the screen.  Sky Captian marks a landmark in computer animation, showing the future of CGI and what it can be, beyond some of the crap it has been.  Even the water, still not perfect, is about 80 times better.

 Finally, the acting is also what it should be in a movie.  Unlike Lucas’ cattle actors (go see Garden State and remember that Natalie Portman can act, that’s why you liked her), Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Giovanni Ribisi (excellent, by the bye) all rock, totally nailing not only the characters but the cultural and historical icons their characters represent.  Law is that old time man’s man hero.  Paltrow is the hot, extremely feminine, but strong willed reporter.  Jolie nails the tough as nails sexpot with more balls than most guys and a much better idea of how to handle them them most women.  And Giovanni “Good Boy” Ribisi is the movie’s surprise as the perfect partner for Law, Jimmy Olsen with tech knowledge, great smarts and awesome personality.

 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is everything it should be, more than is being advertised and a great big ball of fun.  See it in the theaters.  It needs every inch of that big screen.

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