(2/13/2005) "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a truly groundbreaking movie, at least in terms of visual effects. While not everything looks totally authentic in every scene, the animators really did a great job in using CG to such extremes for the first time. The movie itself is kinda like Indiana Jones meets the old Max Fleischer "Superman" cartoons from the '40s (particularly "Mad Scientist" and "The Mechanical Monsters") meets Errol Flynn. Is "Sky Captain" as good as any one of those 3 ingredients? Well, no. But it's a worthy descendant. In fact, the movie I'm most apt to compare "Sky Captain" to is "Star Wars"; not because they have any similarity in plot or feel, but they're both fantasy epics that would've fallen apart without the right group of actors bringing it to life. "Star Wars" had that cast; unfortunately, "Sky Captain" only gets it partially right.

Granted, the acting in a movie like this doesn't have to be award-worthy or anything, and the actors may have been a little off-kilter because of the unprecedented amount of blue screen work they had to do on this film. But even if the sets had been practical, I would still think Jude Law was miscast as Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan. He tries to appear cool and confident, comes off looking lifeless and bored. Certainly I don't think he's a bad actor, not at all; he just didn't seem to have a good handle on what the character of Sky Captain is all about. Gwyneth Paltrow did better, because she just looks so right for her part, but she didn't really do it for me either. The two real stand-outs in the cast are Giovanni Ribisi as the archetypal sidekick Dex, and Angelina Jolie as British Air Colonel Franky Cook. The two of them seem to be the only ones who seem to know what era the movie is supposed to be set in (a snappy, snazzy art-deco 1930s-'40s, â là Fleischer's Superman), and what this movie itself is supposed to be: a thrilling popcorn adventure, and nothing more.

With more careful casting, this could have been one of the best adventure movies ever.... fortunately for the filmmakers, the visual effects and production design are so awe-inspiring in their own respective rights that it's easy enough to overlook the film's many faults. At the end of the day, when it comes to picking an interesting movie to watch, you could do worse than "Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow".

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Created May 05, 2009 at 9:46pm • Submit your own review...