[Follow-ups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator]
THE ROCKETEER
[Spoilers]
A film review by Enrique Conty
Copyright 1991 Enrique Conty
There are some *major* spoilers for THE ROCKETEER below. Read them at your own risk!!!
The casting was great, especially Timothy Dalton as the utterly villainous Oil Can Harry ... err, Neville Sinclair. Howard Hughes (actor?) and Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) looked just like they should. Jenny (Jennifer Connely) *did* look like Betty Page ... from the neck down. Wowzers!
But enough pig-chauvinist sexist remarks. On to the FX. The flying scenes were pure Hollywood magic, and a treat to the senses involved. I'm still trying to figure out just how did they do the scene where the rocketpack goes in flames behind, around, and all over Neville (if you've seen it, you know what I mean). One thing I didn't like a bit was Neville's giant hitman. The makeup job was so atrocious he couldn't even talk right!
Some things that I didn't like at all: - The flag scene. Why does every recent superhero movie thinks it needs a cutesy scene where the main character looks a zillion times larger-than-life? - The scene near the end (you know it if you've seen it) which literally screams "SEQUEL!!" back atcha. Pfeh.
The plot is *very* different from the graphic novel, but it still managed to capture the "feel" of the 1930 serials, which was the novel's strong point to begin with. There were a couple of corny and downright campy bits (the animated Nazi propaganda film that ended with "Today Europe, Tomorrow The World" being a perfect example), but overall it "clicked". One scene to add to rec.arts.movies' "perfect movie moments" discussion is the scene where the balsa "Spruce Goose" model glides away into the night...
Overall, I think the movie is worth the six bucks to watch in a first-run cinema. Very good stuff.
P.S. What was the aspect ratio for this film? Either I've got astigmatism or it was more than 1:2.
-- E n r i q u e C o n t y The Amazing Man-With-No-Life jester@ihlpl.att.com
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews