For the record, I didn't want to go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. My standard response to this film has become, "If I want to see a bluescreen, I'll watch the Weather Channel." Sky Captain's gimmick is that the whole film was shot in front of a blue screen, so the elaborate sets and landscapes that you see in the film are entirely computer-generated. Sure, the landscapes are spectacular, but is this really ground-breaking? The last two Star Wars films were practically shot entirely in front of greenscreens. Sky Captain is nothing new and interesting.

And the plot? Well, what there is of it is pretty standard for a 1930s-era adventure film: kidnapped scientists, doomsday device, saving the world. Jude Law is Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan, the leader of some sort of elite British air force. Gwyneth Paltrow is Polly Perkins, spunky reporter for the New York Chronicle. She and Sky Captain had a thing in the past, and now the sexual tension is reaching new and amazing heights. Meanwhile, giant robots are stealing natural resources from all over the world. It's up to Polly and Sky Captain (with the help of some forgettable sidekicks) to find out what evil genius is behind all this.

Turns out the evil genius is ... Sir Lawrence Olivier! Yes, the man who made Hamlet famous on the big screen, the man who is acknowledged along with Richard Burbage as one of history's greatest Shakespearean actors, is the evil Dr. Totenkopf (what a great joke; translated from German, "totenkopf" means "dead head"). As we later find out, though, Totenkopf is just as dead as the guy that plays him. He died twenty years ago and his robots, running automatically, are still working to carry out his insane dream of capturing two of every animal and loading them into a giant rocket-ship that will start a new world (a "world of tomorrow") on some other planet.

Of course, good wins, Jude Law gets the girl, and the movie ends. But which movie? Sky Captain borrows elements of several films: Batman, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Jurassic Park, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Wizard of Oz, and The Empire Strikes Back. The writing is par for the course, but it seems as though the screenwriter (newcomer Kerry Conran, who also directed), faced with the challenge of writing a movie with a gimmick first and a plot second, cobbled together parts of other action films to get this one.

Where was Angelina Jolie during all this? She gets top billing along with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, but she's in the film for about ten minutes. It reminds me of a story told about Psycho: back in the old days, you could walk into a movie at any time, but Alfred Hitchcock wouldn't let people walk into Psycho after it had started because the film was billed as having Janet Leigh, but she gets offed in the first half. He didn't want people to walk in during the second half and be upset at not seeing Janet Leigh. The same thing goes here: I was upset at only seeing Angelina Jolie for ten minutes. And she was wearing an eyepatch! Yaarrgh!

In the end, I was correct. This movie blew super monkey chunks. The gimmick wore off after a little while (if it was ever dazzling in the first place) and this became another run-of-the-mill action film. Not even Art Deco or three Oscar winners could save it. Not even the disembodied head of Lawrence Olivier could save it. I bet even Sky Captain couldn't save this movie. This, like The Phantom, is one to watch on TNT on a lonely afternoon.