'Sky Captain' is visual feast for action enthusiasts

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (Rated PG) Three Stars (Good) "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a technically innovative and exciting adventure romp in the style of 1930s serials, with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow taking on an army of giant robots. Writer-director Kerry Conran has created the latest step in computer wizardry. 107 minutes, Paramount.

A sci-fi adventure with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, "Sky Captain" is visually beholden to "Flash Gordon," "Buck Rogers" and other sci-fi heroes of the 1930s. But to create it, writer-director Kerry Conran has enlisted an army of tech wizards who perform unprecedented magic.

The entire film is a blue-screen adventure, with all its backgrounds and sets "painted" with computer technology. But these backgrounds are retro-realistic, not cartoonish.

Only the actors and the props they hold in their hands are real: Law, Paltrow and company acted on an empty soundstage.

"Sky Captain's" tone is strictly pulp adventure, owing as much to the "Indiana Jones" romps as to the '30s serials that influenced them. References also abound to "The Wizard of Oz," the art deco style of the 1939 World's Fair, "Lost Horizon" and much more.

Although older viewers will enjoy all the references, for younger viewers, "Sky Captain" is simply the latest sci-fi romp in which a hero must save the world from an alien onslaught.

The invaders are giant robots created by a mad scientist, played in a brief cameo by the late, great Laurence Olivier. He returns from the dead through technological magic, but the appearance is too brief to be considered the technology-fueled actor resurrection that's widely anticipated and reviled. However, it must make the Screen Actors' Guild a little nervous.

Jude Law is the Sky Captain, a courageous, carefree adventurer in the Errol Flynn mold. Paltrow is Polly Perkins, a daring reporter who will do almost anything for a story. Angelina Jolie makes a memorable appearance in the latter half of the film, sporting a black eye patch as the colorful leader of an all-female squad of amphibious pilots.

The images and technology are "Sky Captain's" main claim to fame, but they serve an entertaining story peppered with saucy screwball dialogue.

In other words, "Sky Captain" is good fun — and great looking. Technology-wise, the "World of Tomorrow" is today.

Rated: PG, stylized sci-fi violence and brief mild language.