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THE ROCKETEER
A film review by Olivia Williamson
Copyright 1991 Olivia Williamson
I, too, saw the ROCKETEER preview on Saturday. From the early publicity and summaries I heard, this could have been a really awful movie. Fortunately, Disney resisted the temptation to try and make this a summer blockbuster, and just a made a nice, entertaining film with adventure, romance, humor, and not too much violence.
It doesn't begin with a bang -- you kind of segue into the movie. Actually, the first fifteen minutes or so strongly resembles the IMAX film "Flyers" which had some great scenic shots, but no plot. Fortunately, Rocketeer *does* develop a plot. We meet our Hero and his pals, and are then introduced to the Love Interest (Jennifer Connelly, who is a good choice for the looks of the late 30's, and actually plays a fairly strong character). Interspersed with this, we learn of the Conflict, which is the "rocket" of the title which has been stolen by the bad guys.
The plot is hardly unique (in fact, I think it has a lot of similarities with the first Indiana Jones movie: a little bit lower-key, maybe), but it is well-developed, and has some nice twists -- who exactly the bad guys are and why is not divulged until fairly late in the game, and is a satisfying discovery. There are nicely handled humourous touches throughout, and some in-jokes for Disney freaks (that aren't obviously in-jokes).
The costuming was very well done, and they were very careful at recreating a big-band dance floor/musician's stand/Hollywood night-spot of the 30's location. The music wasn't too exciting, but wasn't detracting.
"Our Hero" gave a reasonable performance (although now I can't remember his name), but he had that River Phoenix hairdo we saw on young Indy in THE LAST CRUSADE which I found irritating. Jennifer Connelly gave a good performance of a fairly strong character -- and I think she's really pretty. Timothy Dalton plays an older Hollywood actor, of the Errol Flynn type -- I think it was a much better performance than we saw from him in the James Bond movies. Unfortunately, he resembles a bit to closely Terry O'Quinn, who plays Howard Hughes -- not the weirded-out recluse we associate the name with, but a capable engineer and director of a major company. Anyway, this resemblance can be a little confusing at first, but it soon clears up.
I think it's a strong film, and both the kids and the adults in the audiuence really enjoyed it. Comic-book type machine-gun shooting, but not many people get hurt. No strong language, no nudity -- it's under the Disney label, so I think they wanted to keep it moderate. I think it's probably the best live-action film they've done in quite some time, and I hope they can make more in the same vein. Do go see it when it comes out in two weeks -- I probably will.
- Olivia
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