MGM Starring: James Franco, Jennifer Decker, Jean Reno
Directed By: Tony Bill
Rated: PG-13
MGM
Surprise, surprise--once again, Dave bucks the mainstream critics. I don't think it's because I have bad taste in movies...it's probably more like I have a broader sense of what's "good." That is, I don't think that a movie has to be a cinematic masterpiece in order to enjoy it.
Flyboys is certainly not a cinematic masterpiece. But I did enjoy it. I was intrigued the moment I saw the first trailer. My reaction was, "Oooh...a World War I movie! You don't see many of those!" (It is, in fact, the first World War I aviation film in over 40 years.) Of course, Meghan (who hates war movies) was nonplussed, so it was destined to be an afternoon matinee. I even had to do a bit of a hard sell to convince my friend Mark to go and see it after he saw the 20-something rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But I enjoyed the film--and so did Mark, though maybe not as much as me.
Flyboys tells the story of the Lafayette Escadrille--a French flying squadron made up of volunteers who chose to enter World War I before the United States officially did so. The film is "based on a true story," but not being a World War I history buff, I can't speak to the authenticity of the events. In fact, I suspect that the film is probably about as accurate as Pearl Harbor when it comes to its history--it got all of the costumes, most of the dates, some of the events, and a few of the names right while the rest was left to dramatic license. That's okay, though...I went to be entertained, not to get a history lesson. Of course, the story was interesting enough so that I'll probably do some reading about Lafayette Escadrille in the near future. But I digress.
The movie unfolds in a purely formulaic fashion at the start. We see the various members of the squadron in their lives before becoming the titular flyboys. Each of them has something to prove or something to escape. Blaine Rawlings (Franco) has just lost his family's ranch in Texas. Briggs Lowry (Tyler Labine) is a rich kid whose father makes him join to prove himself. There's an African-American boxer who wants to make something of himself. A proud guy from a military family who wants to carry on the tradition and make his family and his beautiful girlfriend back home proud. The religious man turned warrior. A seemingly dangerous, secretive individual amongst the good guys who is really only misunderstood. The list goes on. Anyone familiar with this sort of cinematic formula can pretty much pick out who's going to be the hero, who's going to overcome his adversities and rise to the occasion, and who's going to die tragically. It's not that difficult.
But I didn't go to see a deep film--I went to see dogfights. Probably the best thing the film has going for it is that it gets the characters into their planes and into the thick of things quickly. There's plenty of dogfighting in the film and, contrary to what a log of the critics say, I thought the computer generated flying scenes were quite well executed for the most part. The battles are exciting--maybe not Top Gun exciting, but you have to temper your expectations. These planes were slow and fragile things, and they didn't have missiles and radar. It was just the pilots and the planes--and some unreliable machine guns that jammed a lot.
There's also a love story (Rawlings falls for a lovely French girl named Lucienne (Decker)), a dark villainous German pilot to raise the audience's ire, and a self-sacrificing hero who seems to care about nothing but really cares more than everyone else put together.
If you break it down dramatically, the film proceeds more like a video game than an actual narrative. If you were to take out the preamble and the love story scenes, you'd wind up with a series of mission briefings (given by the stern French commandant with a heart of gold played by Jean Reno), missions, and post-mission cut scenes. Like I said--nothing that 's going to win Oscars, but really not that bad for an afternoon's entertainment.
I think it says something when one can see all the flaws in a film and yet still enjoy it so thoroughly. Flyboys is definitely not perfect--nowhere close, in fact. But I gotta tell you...I'll probably buy it and watch it over and over. It's an enjoyable little film that's proof-positive that the mainstream critics have just forgotten how to have fun.
Bottom line: If you go in looking for lots of cool, exciting dogfights in World War I biplanes, you won't be the least bit disappointed.