If ever there was an in-flight movie—mindless, insubstantial and something you would never bother seeing in a theater—this flimsy romantic comedy about an ambitious flight attendant is it. It's unlikely, though, that View from the Top will ever unspool midair, because attendants would have just cause to call an immediate sit-down strike over being depicted as such silly bunnies.
In View, plucky Donna (Paltrow) leaves her itsy-bitsy Nevada town to seek travel and adventure working as a waitress in the air. She starts off with an el cheapo carrier (its motto: "Big hair, short skirts and service with a smile") and then switches to prestigious Royalty Airlines, which has international routes. Along the way she meets nice guy Ted (Ruffalo), a law student, and finds herself conflicted between hearth and Heathrow. "If I really fall in love," she moans, "I worry I'm going to lose everything I've dreamed of."
Although intended as a modern-day fable, View is embarrassingly behind the times with its either-or scenario. The skies are filled these days with attendants who have spouses and kids back home. Other missteps: depicting flying as still glamorous (anyone who has ever been crammed into an overbooked flight knows that's wrong) and attendants as all being under 30 rather than old enough, as many are now, to have read 1967's Coffee, Tea or Me upon first publication.
For Paltrow, this seems like an extended version of her appearances on Saturday Night Live. She plays it broad and has fun, but nothing's at stake. Applegate and Preston show off big hair and chests and little else. (PG-13)
BOTTOM LINE: Buckle your seat belts, it's a bumpy flight
Morgan Freeman, Jason Lee, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane
Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote and directed The Big Chill, goes for the big kill with his latest effort, a botched horror film. Dreamcatcher, based on a Stephen King novel and adapted by Kasdan and William Goldman, is about four childhood buddies (think Stand by Me) who grow up with shared psychic powers. As adults, they head off to a cabin in the Maine woods for a weekend and find themselves threatened by rapacious, toothsome alien creatures. (Shouldn't our heroes' paranormal abilities have warned them against the trip?) At the same time this quartet is trying to stay alive, a top military unit led by a whacked-out commander (Freeman) is also taking aim at the pesky critters.
Little of this makes much sense, and the confusion only grows as the movie progresses. The screen is drenched in blood and body parts (the evil creatures emerge from people's backsides—don't ask), and it takes a strong stomach to sit through several scenes. The acting ranges from competent (Lee and Sizemore) to wooden (Jane) to an over-the-top John Wayne imitation (Freeman). (R)
BOTTOM LINE: A nightmare
Parminder Nagra
Critic's Choice
Jess (Nagra), an Anglo-Indian teen living in London, loves soccer and worships pro star David Beckham. Her immigrant parents forbid her to play. "She shouldn't be running around showing her bare legs to men," her mother says. Jess secretly joins a youth-league team, and when her folks find out, there's trouble. Toss in a romance with her Irish-born coach, a misunderstanding with an English teammate and her sister's big fat Indian wedding, and you have the ingredients for a feel-good film that's actually good.
Like My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Real Women Have Curves, Bend It Like Beckham is a likable, hugely enjoyable cross-cultural comedy. Co-written and directed with energetic flair by Gurinder Chadha, Bend generously depicts its characters as persons rather than stereotypes. (PG-13)
BOTTOM LINE: A winner
Crispin Glover, R. Lee Ermey
With his long, elegantly sharp nose, Glover certainly has the profile to star in this remake of the 1971 rat-infested horror hit. And his performance as an introvert who avenges himself on the world with an army of rodents has the twitching, blinking nervousness of a lab animal afraid to take a step farther in an experimental maze. At times, however, Glover erupts into prolonged hysterical shrieks that would puncture a mouse's eardrums. He makes Tony Perkins in Psycho seem as unruffled as Vin Diesel.
The film is just as willfully (i.e., pointlessly) eccentric, a heavily stylized fantasy of repression and anger set in the filthy Gothic monstrosity Willard calls home. There's surprisingly little gore or special effects (the legion of lethal rats simply pour out and flow like a river of mink) and a fair amount of camp. The rats hunt down a house cat to the accompaniment of Michael Jackson singing "Ben," the Oscar-nominated theme to the original Willard's 1972 sequel. But what does that mean? (PG-13)
BOTTOM LINE: Not worth a nibble
•Bringing Down the House Steve Martin and Queen Latifah score mostly cheap laughs as, respectively, an uptight lawyer and : an escaped jailbird. (PG-13)
•The Girl from Paris An endearing comedy : about a Paris-based teacher (Mathilde Seigner) who moves to the country to become a farmer. (Not rated)
•Old School Male-bonding frat comedy has its moments, most of them provided by the divine Will Ferrell. (R)
•Piglet's Big Movie Another Disney adaptation of Winnie-the-Pooh. Snoozy, but fine for piglet-size children. (G)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
