the machine takes pictures of us

A bunch of us went to Springdale last night to see a sneak preview of Flyboys that Jen won tickets too. The story follows the exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of Americans who volunteered to fly for the French army prior to the United States' entrance into World War I. It was fairly entertaining, but I really can't recommend that you go see it. First of all, like so many movies these days, it was entirely way too long. Remember, that's coming from someone who happily sat through all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back to back (and the first two were the extended editions). It seems that after the success of Lord of the Rings every editor in Hollywood was fired and directors were told to run wild and be as self-indulgent as possible. Peter Jackson himself made that mistake with King Kong, it's the reason I wouldn't even see Pirates of the Caribbean II, and we see it once again in Flyboys.
The movie was over two hours long, and certainly could have been trimmed down. There were too many unnecessary additions to the plot (most of the obligatory romance story, the one guy being accused as a spy, etc.) that didn't much of anything to flesh out the side characters or advance the story. Naturally, no Hollywood movie would be complete without a romance being forcefully jammed into the story, although the love story in Flyboys is less painful than many of its counterparts (Pearl Harbor, for example). At least they didn't turn it into the usual love-triangle.

Obviously the main draw of the film is the action sequences in the air, and the dog fights are mostly successful in entertaining. The main problem with them is that they get fairly predictable and a little absurd at times. To be honest, much of the film's entertainment value was in laughing at whatever ridiculous scene was unfolding on the screen. Something tells me that landing your plane just behind the front line trenches to rescue a downed comrade stranded in no-man's-land isn't very accurate. I don't want to spoil much of the movie, but I'll just say that most of the movie was so laughably idiotic that late in the film, we were actually able to predict that one character would pull out a pistol and shoot another pilot right in the face with it. As they were flying in the air. That guy must have been the greatest shot of all time to hit the tiny target of a person's head in one moving plane from another. Snakes on a Plane could learn a lesson in comedic lunacy from Flyboys; the latter was for more fun and entertaining.

The characters were mostly straight from your typical Hollywood cookie-cutter. James Franco plays the rugged, handsome, cocky main character that is cast first on looks, second on acting ability (apparently no one realized that there probably were not many World War I pilots with blond highlights in their hair). He wasn't horrible, but it was obvious he was cast on looks. Then there's the stereotypical grizzled veteran who doesn't care about anyone else because everyone he cared about has been killed, the African-American who must overcome the prejudice of other pilots (at least that part is probably accurate), the son of a wealthy businessman who is a disappointment to his father because he'd rather become an artist, and so on. The actors themselves really weren't bad, but their characters could have used more fleshing out and more originality.
So if you just want to be entertained, then by all means, go see Flyboys over the aforementioned Snakes. But if you really want to see a good movie this weekend, go see Jet Li's Fearless. Li's final martial arts flick is a great story. The plot is very good, Li's character is well-developed, and above all, the action scenes are very well done. It doesn't have the visual style of Hero, but it's an excellent martial arts epic about a Chinese legend and a fitting end to Li's career.