View From the Top: Critic Reviews

It's stuck in a faux nostalgia for upwardly mobile second-class citizenship for women.

This satire of flight attendants and their career problems is so toothless and scatterbrained that it doesn't really deserve to be called a satire.

One of those misfires that seems like a comedy but never convinces you for sure.

There's not much zest here, even with Mike Myers's energetic attempts to steal the movie.

It's meant to be funny. It's not, or not particularly. It's meant to be cute. Maybe it is, but I hate cute. It's meant to be harmless fluff. It is. All of this isn't terribly interesting.

Who on earth is this embarrassment -- easily the worst film of the year to date -- aimed at?

Eventually, the exhaust roar of condescending affirmation drowns all else out.

Given the weakness of the script, it's surprising how many top-flight performers participated.

Virtually every cliche and stereotype is on parade, culminating in the career-vs.-love choice.

Paltrow is lovable in the right roles, and here she's joined by two others who are sunny on the screen: Candice Bergen, as the best-selling flight attendant who becomes her mentor, and Mark Ruffalo.

View From the Top is an apt title for this sorta-comedy, which always seems to be looking down on its characters.

A piddling exercise in which our heroine must decide between her literally lofty ambitions and her hunky sweetheart.

A predictable piffle of a movie that never comes close to the heights its talented cast promises.

If this is the View From the Top, I'd hate to see the View From the Bottom.

The characters have no wit or charm, the plot has no conflict or development, nothing happens for any reason other than script requirements.

Given that its wings have been severely clipped since it finished lensing two years ago, View From the Top flubs nearly every opportunity to be the comedy it wanted to be.

A dire stewardess comedy that's the movie equivalent of airline food.

It never comes to life. It rarely even reaches the level of cute.

Might be productively -- and quite reasonably -- assaulted on a number of fronts (for its class condescension, its lack of humour, its waste of talent or even its sheer visual ugliness), but it seems both cruel and unnecessary to do so.

Comedies don't come much flatter.

A light airplane comedy that's actually funny.

A mediocre diversion -- a movie better watched at home where the remote control can be used (if necessary) to fast forward to the film's best part: the obligatory end credit outtakes.

A flat, superficial comedy that never establishes a tone.

What might fly as a skit on SNL never leaves the runway on the screen as Brazilian director Bruno Barreto and first-time screenwriter Eric Wald set the cast on a desperate search for laughs.