As far as the end result goes, the film tries its best to capture that certain charm and magic of retro pulp adventure and sci-fi. The spirit and imagination is definitely there, as giant robots pummel cities with ray guns, and entire wings of planes and flying machines clash in midair. The film rolls along at an even and steady pace, with plentiful amounts of action, peril, visual wonder, and loads of homages to genre classics.
Unfortunately, the experience is marred by a few things. Even though there are a lot of nifty vehicles, weapons, and ideas on display, the special effects are pretty bad, even by 2004 standards. They tend to look hazy and soft, and backgrounds don't seem to merge well with the actors. For a film that must be 90% special effects, it makes the whole film look gaudy. All the action scenes whiz by without leaving much of an impact, and the whole lot of them are underwhelming in the end.
The most disappointing aspect is the storytelling. Weak exposition is used to string the characters from one big event to the next on a thin thread of a plot. I never even understood who the villain was and what the evil plot was, but it was some kind of excuse to send giant robots and flying bird-like machines out into the world, and launch a rocket from some lost island populated by prehistoric animals. What makes the plot most underwhelming, however, are the characters. The titular Sky Captain has no charisma or presence; he's pretty much just a fighter pilot with a vague history that garners respect from everybody else. He tries his best to match up with other action heroes like Indiana Jones, but at least Indy had personality, charm, charisma, and a tough struggle - Sky Captain does not. As far as the side characters go, the love interest (named Polly Perkins, who ironically is played by the same gal who would go on to play Pepper Potts) is rather bland and borderline unlikable. Really, Angelina Jolie's brief appearance might be the only character I found intriguing (and that might just be because the eyepatch is cool). Altogether, it adds up to a bland and shallow experience.
Using all-digital photography and all-digital effects, the film looks soft, fake, and low-budget. Editing is okay; there is an over-abundance of transitions and overlays in the beginning, but the rest of the film is fine. Acting is rather weak and bland from the whole cast: Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow come off as a rather uninteresting duo. Angelina Jolie seems to be the only one who looks like she's having fun, with Giovanni Ribisi in close second as an on-again off-again sidekick character. Writing could have been much better; I suspect that more fine-tuning on the script could have produced a better story. Even though this film uses some imaginative and well-designed dieselpunk sets, props, and costumes, the weak special effects do little to make me really care for them. What few real-looking objects the film has are pretty decent, but the film overall looks almost too slick and too clean for its own good. Music didn't do much for me either.
I wanted to like this film, but I can't help but to regard it as a bland misfire, thanks to its gaudy all-digital production, the wooden acting, and the weak story. It is worth seeing once for the gee-whiz factor; some people will love it, some won't. Unfortunately, I do not.
2/5 (Entertainment: Marginal | Story: Poor | Film: Poor)
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