After a series of attacks by giant robots, a spunky reporter teams up with a renegade flyboy to save the world from imminent destruction in this reimagining of the past as future.

Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) thinks she’s on to the story of her life when she insists on tagging along with the heroic Joe (Jude Law) as he tries to figure out who’s behind the giant-robot attacks – and why they’ve kidnapped his loyal sidekick, Dex (Giovanni Ribisi). The trail leads the intrepid duo from land to the sky to the sea and back again, often in Joe’s amazing fighter plane.

The story is told in the tradition of 1940′s-era serials, complete with an evil mastermind, cliffhangers (and plenty of them), whiz-bang effects, and a paper-thin script. People die, although there’s no blood shed. In fact, since this is a PG-rated film, much of the violence takes place offscreen.

The movie plays heavily on the futuristic fears of the past. Perhaps you can remember reading The War of the Worlds for the first time, or even hearing Orson Welles’ production of it in 1938. Comics at the time – and even into the fifties – spoke of robots and alien encounters on a purely sci-fi basis; now they belong more in the realm of reality. Science-fiction movies of yesteryear preyed on the fear of the unknown. Since everyday people were less inclined to be as technologically as they are today, science could be portrayed as the root of all evils – or the solution to them. Back then, one could easily imagine a fleet of flying robots, or an amphibious airplane, or a rocketship of doom.

Jude Law is aces as Joe, the Sky Captain of the title. Joe is fearless, shrewd, daring, smart, and charming – everything one would expect to see in a hero in an oldtime movie serial. If there’s a solution, the audience knows somehow Joe will find it. Indiana Jones, remember, was cast in the same basic mold, and I think the characterization holds up today – unlike so much else from the old serials. Kudos are also due to Angelina Jolie, an RAF commander and former colleague/flame of Joe. Jolie has limited screen time (about twenty minutes or so), but she certainly makes the most of it. Hers was probably the strongest performance of the cast; compelling, vibrant, and dominating. She looked right for the role, too, complete with black eye patch to mask her exquisite looks.

To balance out the fantastic work turned in by Law and Jolie, Paltrow phones in an absolutely horrid performance that wasn’t helped at all by a poor script. But see, good actresses should be able to overcome bad scripts, at least to some degree. Paltrow’s Polly started out smart and appealing, but that facade was quickly lifted, and she became a snippy, annoying, selfish witch. (This is a family-oriented review, so I’ll refrain from strong language.) It’s important to understand that the scripts and plots of oldtime serials weren’t exactly Annie Hall, but somehow Law and Jolie were able to rise above their transparent lines and give commanding performances. Paltrow looked way out of her league; I was openly rooting for her to die. That’s hardly ever good for a leading lady, you’d think. But alas and alack, since this is patterned after oldtime serials, that sort of ending was never very likely.

The overall writing is actually quite good, at least in terms of the plot. Watch Indiana Jones, for example, and you’ll notice the plot whisks you along without your having to stop and consider what might happen next. Sky Captain does this as well, travelling from exotic locale to exotic locale, from set piece to set piece without a pause. That’s the good feature of the writing. The bad is that all in all, the characterizations aren’t very deep; they’re simple characters for a simple time. You know, to put it simply. (Polly utters a “goddamn!” at one point, but is too ashamed later to say “naked.” Weird.)

But beyond the acting and the writing, the one aspect that overshadows all in its gosh-darn, gee-whiz-bang awe are the special effects. The entire movie was shot against a blue screen; everything except the main characters was computer generated. That’s pretty amazing, really; the computerized scenery blends so seamlessly with the actors (for the most part) that one easily forgets their origin. Paltrow’s performance at times made my brain hiccup a little, as it tried to reconcile her actions with the background. The actors had some idea of what they were supposed to be doing, but essentially they acted in front of a blue screen, and then they were digitally added to the existing footage. Since the movie wasn’t shot on a set, exactly, there’s a scene at the beginning that made me hesitate a little: Polly is trying to take a picture of the invading robots, and she drops her camera (of course). As she tries to rescue it from a drain, she doesn’t seem particularly afraid of the hundreds-of-feet-tall rampaging robots. This is just poor acting on the part of Paltrow.

Well cast, and somewhat well written, Sky Captain is an homage to and revival of those old wild-eyed sci-fi classics, the ones that made you gaze in wonderment toward the skies and to the future.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: ***