Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Critic Reviews

A gorgeous, funny, and welcome novelty.

When Sky Captain remembers that storytelling and characters matter more than design and special effects, it charms as well as impresses.

A clever parlor trick but a dull movie.

This is a sophisticated movie, but one whose sophistication is surprisingly simple-minded.

A $70 million novelty item.

The only thing keeping it from greatness is a good story.

His nostalgia enabled by technology, Conran takes the ghosts in his machine seriously, and the results appear at once meltingly lovely and intriguingly inhuman.

Missing beneath its fabulous surface, however, is anything like a beating heart.

Half of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a film of breathtaking vision and craftsmanship, a work of art that both summarizes the early history of cinema and takes it brilliantly, shimmeringly forward. The other half is not.

A film to look at but not always listen to. But the impact of many of its images is worth all the rest.

This pulp fantasy spectacle is a fond tribute to beloved Movies -- with a capital M.

It's like a film that escaped from the imagination directly onto the screen, without having to pass through reality along the way.

Drawing from a well of pulp fiction, film noir and comic book imagery -- not to mention influences from The Wizard of Oz to Fritz Lang's Metropolis -- Conran and crew evoke a highly stylized 1939.

This debut feature by Kerry Conran is a triumph not only for its technical mastery but for its good taste.

Sublime.

As the novelty wears off, it becomes increasingly apparent that what's going on in the background is more interesting than what's happening in the foreground.

A technological wonder from beginning to end.

A diverting if lightweight adventure.

Such an interestingly silly movie that I found myself idly wondering what particular audience was being targeted with its peculiar conceits and infinitude of special effects.

Hybrid of old Hollywood conventions and advanced digital technology is arresting at first but gradually trails off under the weight of its hyper-derivativeness and anxiety to please.

A breathtakingly beautiful sci-fi adventure.

The visuals are something, the story something less.

With its silky textures and fluffed up fake-studio imagery, Sky Captain is like a big warm pillow that threatens to smother you in downy gorgeousness.

What begins as childlike and filled with wonder ends as childish and fraught with tedium.

Ultimately seems more like a fancy mechanical toy than a work of art we can warm up to.