Sky Captain - It’s Available Monday And It’s Cack

Well. it looks nice. Infact, it looks great - all shimmering sepia tones and grainy Nineteen-Forties loveliness. But that’s hardly the point. A steaming plate of rat poison pies may look nice with a little garnish sprinkled here and there. It still wouldn’t be very advisable to eat them.

Little things, it transpires, make a difference. Plot, character, cohesive narrative structure … ever notice how films generally held up as being ‘good’ seem to take these novel concepts on board? Funny, that.

The sad thing is: this could have been fun. It could have been a walloping slice of vintage-era, Friday Night, Boy’s-Own, Tin-Tin paced comic book malarkey.

Given a decent script, Jude Law’s turn as Joe ‘Sky Captain’ Sullivan could have been something genuinely entertaining rather than the stunted performance we get here - somewhere around the level of primary school Christmas Play readthrough.

Law - an undoubtedly talented actor - is so wooden here one is left wondering if the make-up department simply opted for Ronseal.

The blessed (Gwyneth) Paltrow dollies around amiably as ‘ace reporter’ Polly Perkins while Angelina Jolie’s time on screen is so breathtakingly brief and pointless that only two options spring to mind: a) most of her phoned-in non-acting ended up on the cutting room floor, or b) the filming process played second-fiddle to her busy self-mutilating ‘craaaazy chick’ schedule.

Meanwhile Giovanni Ribisi pops up. Giovanni Ribisi is criminally sidelined. Giovanni Ribisi deserves better.

Apparently the whole thing was a long-mooted dream project for director Kerry Conran. These claims of a singular vision start to wane, however, upon actually watching the thing - this is filmmaking by Star-Wars-chatroom committee, every overcooked ingredient hauled in from somewhere else.

And, yes, while this sector of the audience may find themselves salivating over the countless nods to sci-fi pop culture, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else - say, someone who’s ever kissed a real-life girl - feeling the same way.

At least in the cinema the visuals would have been given a mild boost. DVD, however, sees all - it’s the format of truth, slaying the cinematic dragons and putting The Cap squarely in his unimpressive place.

So. Is there anything good to say about Sky Captain?

Well, as muddled fantasy ‘epics’ go, it’s nowhere near as bad as the Matrix trilogy. But - seeing as snorting ground-up fibreglass is nowhere near as bad as the Matrix trilogy - that isn’t much of a recommendation at all…