Sky Captain & World Of Tomorrow - Probably a little too clever for its own good

‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’ is basically a homage to science fiction from yesteryear when stories were in black and white days, didn’t have to be particularly ‘technically or factually accurate’ and robots looked like they were made out of Lego.

Unfortunately, it does the job a little too well. It’s deliberately awful in the way it’s filmed, acted and shot, all of which is keeping with the genre it’s based on. However, not many of today’s audience really ‘got it’ and just saw a badly-acted, badly-shot film with weird and dodgy special effects.

People say that neither Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow or Angelina Jolie seem to be able to act in this film. And they’d be right. None of the three leads’ performances are particularly three-dimensional. However, I kind of took that as the point, seeing as they’re actually basing their characters on the wooden heroes of times past.

If you’re going to enjoy this film, you need to have a nostalgic appreciation for the sort of black and white Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon TV serials on Saturday mornings. And there’s not that many of us left who still like that sort of film, therefore Sky Captain, despite being a clever and novel idea by today’s standards, was never really destined to be a financial success. I enjoyed it for what it was, but for anyone who doesn’t remember Buck Rogers and co, they’ll probably see it as little more than an extended eighties Queen video for ‘Radio Gaga.’

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that