"Sky Captain": into the wild blue yonder
Ideally, Kerry Conran's intoxicating sci-fi adventure "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" should be watched in a '30s moviehouse with Art Deco fixtures — just to complete the journey into a bygone world. It's the most stylish studio movie I've seen in a while, and, despite a bit of silliness and story-padding, marvelous fun to watch.
Conran, a first-time filmmaker who's spent the past 10 years on this project, has completed an impressive achievement: "Sky Captain" is, so the press materials say, the first major movie ever to be filmed entirely in blue screen. (In other words, the actors are filmed against a blank backdrop, and then the backgrounds are filled in later using digital technology.) But you don't have to even know or care about the technical achievement to be dazzled by the look of this film.
Set in 1939 Manhattan and other exotic locations, "Sky Captain" is a retro symphony in gray, with an occasional jolt of candy-apple-red lipstick. Conran has given it all a snow-globe quality; all the lines are soft and slightly smudgy, as if a faint layer of dust had settled. Edward Shearmur's score evokes old-school superhero adventures; Stella McCartney's costumes are all nostalgia and nuance, from the flip of a trench-coat collar to the slouch of a black fedora.
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And the actors populating this beautifully animated world all look like a dream. Jude Law, as hero pilot Joe Sullivan, smolders like a Technicolor heartthrob; breathy-voiced Gwyneth Paltrow, as the fedora'd girl reporter Polly Perkins, is wreathed in angelic blond hair. (This photogenic duo was previously teamed in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"; if it's possible, they're even more picture-perfect now.) Angelina Jolie, all eye patch and lips, struts about as Captain Francesca (Franky) Cook, barking out lines like "Alert the amphibious squadron!" with juicy aplomb.
"Sky Captain" has many inspirations — comic books (we see a pile in a brief scene; as one of the movie's few splashes of color), classic sci-fi and adventure movies, and most of all "The Wizard of Oz," which is touchingly evoked in a moviehouse scene and whose narrative structure Conran's film borrows. "Toto, we must be over the rainbow," says Judy Garland, in that heartbreaking, quavery voice, and indeed we are.
The plot's as silly as any Saturday matinee: Joe and Polly must save the world from evil mastermind Dr. Totenkopf, who's causing the disappearance of scientists the world over.
As robots invade the streets of Manhattan, the two squeeze into Joe's nifty plane (complete with painted-on teeth) and head to the Himalayas and Shangri-La for adventure, a bit of bickering, and the requisite happy ending. (The last line of this movie is comic perfection, and I wouldn't dream of sharing it with you.)
Some may find "Sky Captain" too high-concept, too glamorous, too stylized, too nostalgic. They can go watch "The Bourne Supremacy" again while the rest of us can bask in this movie's retro glamour. Paltrow, fleeing a massive robot who looks like an angular King Kong, pauses in midflight to daintily rip her pencil skirt, so as to run freely; it's a perfect detail.
Conran obviously loves "The Wizard of Oz," but it's clear that he's got plenty of wizardry up his own sleeve.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com