Review of The Rocketeer (1991) by Rebecca H — 31 Jan 2009

A tedious 'superhero' film devoid of superheroics, with heroes so boring they could send you into a coma, pottering around with ghastly small town values to saccharin small town music. Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell), the wooden, floppy haired lead is a pilot who finds a jetpack. He doesn't do much with it, because there isn't really a plot. It's far more about the various people who want to get their hands on it and good luck trying to remember which are the FBI and which are the gangsters.

Cliff has a casual and infuriatingly selfish actress girlfriend, who, after getting kidnapped, is suddenly supposed to be his love interest. Yeah, right.

So, it's boring, and then the ending is laughably over the top, with the table endlessly turning and so many armies popping out of the bushes the characters must be blind. The embarrassed camera cuts away as Cliff manages to set fire to an American flag with his jetpack. Not the best idea when the enemy are Nazis.

And isn't that an annoying twist. Timothy Dalton is the only likeable and watchable person in this film, playing famous, dashing Hollywood actor Neville Sinclair, desperate to get his hands on the jetpack. His scenes are the only ones that will wake you from the stupor you've been cast into. Then it turns out he's a Nazi. And no matter how much a villain is the best thing in a film, if he's a Nazi, it's just inappropriate to root for him. So there's nothing to be gained from the ending at all. You can't be glad for the heroes because they're awful, and you can't be sorry for the villains, because they're the accepted definition of film evil, without having to put any effort in.

Mind numbing.