Whether a film soars or falls like Icarus on his wax coated wings depends on the screenplay. No matter how great the film looks, if there is, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein "there there" then it'll be empty and vapid but oh so nice to look at. "Flyboys" takes off quickly but soars a little too close to the critical heat of the sun falling as rapidly as it takes off. The script feels like the writer watched every old war/aviation movie since 1930, distilled all the watered down clichés in each one and dumped them in the blender. Then blender then vomited up the mess that is the basis for this film. ***

Blaine Rawlings (!) (James Franco) shows up in France to become a pilot and fight the Germans during World War I. He and the other raw recruits cut up, crash planes, learn how to shoot while flying, argue about who is and isn't a hooker, save lives and try to kill the Red Barron (or this movie's equivalent). Honestly, Snoopy wouldn't be caught dead in this film. Yes, it's that bad. It sure does look nice though. The dogfights (pardon the pun here Snoopy) do save the day with "Flyboys" with its mix of CG and live action stunts. Director Tony Bill does a terrific job of composing the visuals but it's the vomit pretending to be dialogue that comes out of the actor's mouths that undoes the film. Just remember to skip to all the action scenes and you'll have a great 20 minute movie. The script is heavy handed, poorly written, uses every cliche in the book and just plain dumb. And I'm being nice about it. ---

Image & Sound:

A clean, sharp transfer "Flyboys" looks pretty good overall. There was some problem with the preview disc because, once again, it's a burned preview disc that Fox has sent out similar to other titles. As a result, there are noticeable issues with pixilation particularly during very busy action sequences. I'm assuming that Fox will have licked this problem when it puts out the actual product. Colors are bold as the flyboys themselves. Audio sounds impressive plopping you into the action. We get a choice of 5.1 Dolby Surround or 5.1 DTS. ---

The preview copy of "Flyboys" only has the commentary track with director Tony Bill and producer Dean Devlin. Both are quite chatty although they seem oblivious to the weaknesses in the script (or perhaps they chose to ignore them). We also get trailers for "The Illusionist", "Copying Beethoven", "Home of the Brave" and the Oscar nominated "The Last King of Scotland". ***

Evidently the released 2 disc version will have numerous extras beyond the two I've mentioned but Fox hasn't provided these. The edition received for review was the single disc edition coming out the same day as the "Collector's Edition". Cheap.

Final Words: