Stephen Holden of the NY Times reviews Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which opens this weekend nationwide.
If nothing else, “Sky Captain” is a landmark in computer-generated imagery. Its actors cavort through an entirely synthetic, computerized retro-styled future world that fuses Art Deco, Futurism, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and the spirit of the 1939 World’s Fair into an all-purpose eve-of-World-War-II environment extrapolated into a science fiction limbo. Its cheerfully ominous scenario of a planet invaded by robots that systematically set about stripping the earth of its natural resources resonates in any number of ways without seeming strident or promoting a political agenda.
But the visual elegance of the movie, which opens today nationwide, comes at a price. If its ethereal evocation of a pulp fiction future-past eclipses almost any other sci-fi franchise in subtlety and imagination, its shadowy washed-out color is a far cry from the robust hues of a movie like “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The monochromatic variations on sepia keep the actors and their adventures at a refined aesthetic distance, and the bleached, tinted face of Mr. Law is simply not as real a screen presence as the ruddy, flesh-and-blood Harrison Ford. At times the film is hard to see. And as the action accelerates, the wonder of its visual concept starts giving way to sci-fi cliches.