The Rocketeer

There are shades of Spielberg, with minor touches of Lucas, all throughout this forgotten cult fave. The use of light and shadow. ILM special effects. A score very reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark's music. The 1930s setting. A slew of classic movie tropes, all used for both homage and subtle humor. And of course, Nazis. Definitely a familial resemblance, as a cousin at least, to Raiders and other Lucas/Spielberg collaborations of the ‘80s. No real surprise there, since director Joe Johnston worked on the original Star Wars trilogy and was an art director on Indy’s first adventure. So does this work, if you’ll pardon the pun, soar as high as its ancestral films? Not quite. It has much going for it: the aforementioned borrowed elements of earlier hits; it looks great—especially its recreation of 1930s Hollywood glamour—and that doesn’t even count the visual feast that is a very young and incredibly gorgeous Jennifer Connelly; and the story and script offer lots of entertainment value, with nice amounts of action and humor. But the whole package never quite grabs the viewer all the way; the stakes don’t seem nearly as high as the story elements would have you believe. And, overall, the plot takes a little too long to take flight. (You don’t see the Rocketeer rocketeering until well into the running time.) And, perhaps, lead/hero bill Campbell and villain Timothy Dalton don’t quite have the charisma, in either direction, to really get the viewer totally engaged. So it’s no surprise that a movie like this, which has its fans, also never quite caught on with the viewing public. And there it sits, a modest monument to a brand of filmmaking that once upon a time dominated big-budget big-screen entertainment, and a precursor to the superhero genre that eventually came to rule the motion picture landscape. Maybe Disney will choose to make a reboot of this one, some revved up version with a similar storyline that will take another shot at zooming to amazing heights. (God knows they’ve mined every other past property at this point.) Until then, we have this pleasant, charming, somewhat modest piece of entertainment available to be watched, mildly enjoyed, and then tucked away into a corner of almost forgotten-ness. Sounds about right to me.