'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow'

Regardless of plot points, imagery, dialogue and anything else normally critiqued, there is an overriding beauty in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." Not necessarily visceral or aesthetic, but somewhere in between and undisclosed, it almost plays the role of an aura, similar to the way one can distinguish between a preseason game and the Super Bowl despite the fact they are the same sport with the same rules.

Director Kerry Conran has taken "Sky Captain" and made it a special film, a throwback not just for the sake of reminiscence. Almost every frame in the movie is stylized with a hazy filter on every object and soft lights a-plenty, in a similar fashion to the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" video. The stylization is so consistent that short shots without the effect seem harsh and fake.

It's an old movie without the gravelly voices and grainy pictures, the type of film where a W.C. Fields appearance seems mandatory. (He is supplanted into the film by way of archive footage.) It sets the mood with skylines, atmosphere and actors. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow do more for the movie with their facial expressions and voice inflection than they ever could with action and dialogue.

What is more amazing than anything about "Sky Captain" is that while it used old-school, rigid looking attack robots, its CGI animals, monsters and aircraft looked better than anything "Alien," "Predator" or "Jurassic Park" could produce. It's ahead of its time and behind its time at the same time.

The story itself is very basic, but that's what is so terrific about it. Set in the late 1930's, the faceless villain Dr. Totenkopf-the only sight of whom is archived footage of Laurence Olivier-is out to destroy the world via giant robots and nuclear winter. A beautiful, pesky reporter named Polly Perkins (Paltrow) gets information before the CIA and often finds herself skirt deep in trouble.

She happens to be ex-lovers with a dashing hero, Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Law), who runs his own independent air force. Sullivan and Perkins constantly debate whether or not he cheated on her and whether or not she sabotaged his plane-he's not quite bitter enough for a man who as a result had to spend six months in a prison camp-but still work together to prevent Doomsday.

The supporting cast does a wonderful job. Giovanni Ribisi's role as Dex Dearborn is charming to say the least. His gum chomping, scientific wizardry is second only to his faithful support of best pal Sullivan. Angelina Jolie's smaller than advertised role as Capt. Francesca "Franky" Cook was near perfect as well, her romantic tension with Sullivan just enough to whet the appetite without removing the spotlight from the chemistry between Law and Paltrow.

The plot is an extremely predictable one where punchlines, kidnappings and near death experiences abound. Conran, however, relies on intelligence and wit instead of plot twists, blood or gore. He's made a classy film, decades removed from its recalled era while still establishing neat new tricks.

"Sky Captain" is the type of movie that alludes to sexuality by having Perkins rip her skirt a thread past her knee during an escape so she can run faster. There is also a scene with a mercy killing that is implied rather than shown. There are no death rattles, no violent noises, no guts and no nonsense.

It harkens back to a time when an entire family could see a film without parents worrying whether their children would see something inappropriate and without the boredom that comes from a movie written for children. Thus, the "PG" rating.

There is a market for films like "Superman" and "the Rocketeer," and "Sky Captain" fits somewhere on this list with a gold star for inventiveness next to its name.