The 'Fesser and I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at the dollar theater Monday night. The fact that I forgot about it completely until now should tell you that it's not one for the ages.
Here's the thing. Jude and Gwyneth have no chemistry. [Gwynnie has some with Michael Gambon because she realizes he brings up her game simply by sharing the blue screen with her.] Jude and Angelina appear to have chemistry until you realize it's merely the hotness of Angelina in a leather jumpsuit and an eyepatch refracted off Jude's shiny golden exterior. Jude and Giovanni have the most chemistry: Giovanni plays the damsel in distress that Jude must save. It's touching, really. Only problem is that Jude plays perhaps the most passive, reactive "action" hero ever. Bai Ling has chemistry with her Darth Vader cape, the first garment in years that won't land her on the Worst Dressed List. Remember when Marian tends Indy's wounds on the pirates' ship? There's nothing even close to that sort of chemistry in this film.
Oh yeah, and the vaunted computerized everything? Ehhhh. The flickering, mechanized, peripheral-vision quality of the "extras," especially, made it feel like I was stuck watching some nerdboy play Grand Theft Auto 4: The Naked City on his plasma big screen while I pretended to care.
Sky Captain actually got more believable once the action moved from a putative 30s New York to the strictly impossible realms of Doctor Totenkopf. Yeah, the nods to iconic images including the RKO Radio Pictures logo [thanks, Dyl], Only Angels Have Wings, Lost Horizon, the original The Lost World, and so many other classic films were nice. But a succession of indelible images does not an unforgettable film make.
Watching Sky Captain is like going out with a group for tapas. Everything is beautifully presented, tastes wonderful, and exhibits wonderful taste, but the experience never really coheres into a meal greater than the sum of its parts.
