Review of The Rocketeer (1991) by Terry M — 14 Sep 2014

The folks at Disney took a big gamble adapting the graphic novel of the same name and making "The Rocketeer," a multi-million dollar film that looks great but failed to ignite much passion in the movie-going audience. It's an interesting failure, mostly because there's so much that's good about it with some amazing set design, costume design and art decoration.

The makers spared no expense in the look of the picture, and the eye for detail is quite spectacular. Unfortunately, the studio handed this project over to a fairly untested director in Joe Johnston, who is known more for work in visual effects than anything else. The first half of the picture moves at a sluggish pace, and even though it perfectly recreates the look and feel of the serials of the 1930's and '40's, there's not much fun to be had until the glorious finale.

You don't see many movies make use of blimps anymore but this makes great use of one. It tries to maintain that sense of wonder throughout, but unfortunately, a great deal of this is curiously limp. And that, oddly enough, best describes Billy Campbell in the title role, good looking enough to be sure but he brings precious little in the way of charisma to the role. Jennifer Connolly looks like she just stepped out of a '30's movie magazine, and Timothy Dalton makes for a dashing villain so why the makers hired such a lunk for the lead role is a mystery.

There's so much that I liked about "The Rocketeer" that is bothers me not to be more enthusiastic about it. It gets so much perfect that it's hard to fault it for where it goes wrong.