Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

In its heedless energy and joy, it reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It's like a film that escaped from the imagination directly onto the screen, without having to pass through reality along the way.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Sky Captain is a gorgeous, funny, and welcome novelty.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

As an imaginative visual experience, there's nothing like it. Today, at least.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A triumph not only for its technical mastery but for its good taste.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Everything here from costuming and production design to the note-perfect score from Edward Shearmur works in tandem to create not so much a film as a singular and joyous tribute to a vanished age when wonder only cost a nickel and played three time daily at the Bijou.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Gloriously retro, unashamedly celebratory of the joy of moviemaking and the love of old-fashioned heroism.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The result owes a little to the 1927 "Metropolis," a little to film noir, a little to early depictions of H.G. Wells' science fiction -- notably the 1936 "Things to Come" -- and a little to lovably far-fetched sci-fi serials.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Conran has got himself a looker, with Paltrow in soft focus, the whole world larger than life and a title that, said in the proper low-pitched voice, conveys the tone of the film: exuberant, idiosyncratic and timeless.

Premiere Peter Debruge

Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a pastiche of everything from "King Kong" to "The Wizard of Oz," a movie that escalates to a breathless cliff-hanger every 20 minutes or so and reinvents itself with every reel.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The film's save-the-world scenario may be the stuff of crusty cliff-hangers, its imagery may be borrowed, and its jaunty dialogue anything but deep, but there's something exhilarating going on here. It's darn sublime.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

Other than the actors, their costumes, and a few props, everything in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is digital illusion, and the effects are often exhilarating.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

An extraordinary technical achievement.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A collection of such dazzling digital illusions you can't wait for it to hit DVD so you can freeze individual images.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

No one has really been asking for a fusion of "Independence Day," Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," and an old Buck Rogers serial, but here it is anyway, and the only thing keeping it from greatness is a good story.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Despite its flaws, Sky Captain indulges that inner kid who always wanted a single movie crammed with robots, airships and dinosaurs, with World's Fair hopefulness and panache.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

70% style and 30% substance. It has a plot and characters, but those are almost beside the point.

Village Voice Ed Park

Conran takes the ghosts in his machine seriously, and the results appear at once meltingly lovely and intriguingly inhuman.

LA Weekly Sheila Benson

For Conran, after they finished shooting pesky actors, the real fun began at the computer screen with his delirious imagination in free-fall.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

It’s an exhilarating experience, and raises the bar for the use of digital technology in film.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Arresting at first but gradually trails off under the weight of its hyper-derivativeness and anxiety to please.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

The filmmakers' investment in their weird visions is wildly unorthodox, but the payoff is oddly satisfying.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Too fixated on 1939 for its own good. Its passionate immersion in a past that only dimly resonates with younger audiences may be a badge of its integrity, but that immersion trumps its vision of the future and leaves us in a land of nostalgia.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's a gimmick, it's not a movie.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

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

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A lovingly rendered visual treat struggles with indifferent direction and torpid plot.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The best way to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow -- if you see it at all -- is as an interesting experiment that failed.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

For all its Buck Rogers-style derring-do, gorgeous vistas of an Art Deco New York and sepia-toned cinematography, Sky Captain is a static, uninvolving experience.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

The movie is like one of those newfangled Vegas casinos, where what appears to be open sky is really painted ceiling. What's initially dazzling becomes stifling.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Worse, the story is so thin and clichéd, it seems as if a computer wrote the screenplay and a robot directed it.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

So captivating to look at that you can almost forget there's virtually nothing to it.

Time Richard Corliss

Conran hasn't attached his technical virtuosity to a ripping yarn or infused it with behavioral brio. The first of its kind often doesn't work; Sky Captain may be the Moses that leads other directors to a blue-sky, blue-screen promised land.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

For 12-year-old boys, period.

Empire William Thomas

For its writer-director, Sky Captain was a labour of love. For almost everyone else - including the wooden cast - it’s just a labour.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Like so many technological marvels, at the human level it's not only merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Crass and soulless.