You couldn't blame Disney, really. After all, they'd struck gold - and then some - with WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT and DICK TRACY. Like THE ROCKETEER, those two films had also been lightweight, glossy adventures set roughly during the World War II era. Who's to say that anyone might possibly have suspected that lightning wouldn't necessarily strike a third time? (Then again, we've all heard the expression about three strikes and an out.) I was ten years old on that summer day when my little sister and I were taken to see this. I had no inkling at the time that it had been based on a comic book, but I didn't care; I didn't read comic books then. All I knew was that it had been produced by Disney (a sure-fire name brand for reeling in kids like my sister and myself) and that it was set in midcentury America (a time and place that I had always regarded as colorful and lively) in my mother's hometown of Los Angeles. I didn't expect a masterpiece....but then I didn't expect to be left cold, either.
I think my greatest problem was with the actors who played the hero and heroine: Bill Campbell and Jennifer Connelly. Campbell had very little charisma; and Connelly....well, she might as well have been a very lifelike robot. They were so boring that I found myself rooting for Timothy Dalton's suave and sinister bad guy. If your film's protagonists inspire nothing but apathy from the get-go, you're already in serious trouble.
The plot was so superficial and generic that it could indeed have been plucked from a 1930s Saturday matinée serial. The concept of a Nazi takeover of America using Howard Hughes's jet-pack device seemed like an afterthought. Why were there even Nazis in this, other than that a posse of well-dressed Mafiosi (led by Paul Sorvino) didn't exactly present a credible menace? The answer, of course, is that you can inject Nazis into anything and the plot will automatically become sexier. There's really nothing wrong with this (the INDIANA JONES films and Disney's own BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS had also served up Nazis for a family audience); the problem here is that, unlike in other films, here Nazism seems more like a spice rather than an essential ingredient. Even worse, we are never offered any justification for why a wealthy and personable actor like Neville Sinclair would ever be attracted to Nazi ideology.
For a supposed action film, THE ROCKETEER features precious little action and spends way too much time on plot exposition during the first half of the movie. The romantic subplot could have been totally written out, as well as the aforementioned Nazi element. Kids like movies with stories in them, but not if those stories are overly convoluted. At the end of the day, we just want to see a guy in a rocket suit beating up villains.
(On a side note: Why would Germany be sending a passenger zeppelin around the world in 1938 - a full year after the Hindenburg disaster?) Is there anything at all good about THE ROCKETEER? Sure, there are many things: good dialogue, good music, good special effects, and (in the case of a mob goon named Lothar who looks like he could have made a cameo in DICK TRACY) excellent makeup. But none of these things can ever truly save a movie whose story is weak and whose characters (except for Sinclair) are indeed as paper-thin as the comic-book creations that inspired them.
I think my greatest problem was with the actors who played the hero and heroine: Bill Campbell and Jennifer Connelly. Campbell had very little charisma; and Connelly....well, she might as well have been a very lifelike robot. They were so boring that I found myself rooting for Timothy Dalton's suave and sinister bad guy. If your film's protagonists inspire nothing but apathy from the get-go, you're already in serious trouble.
The plot was so superficial and generic that it could indeed have been plucked from a 1930s Saturday matinée serial. The concept of a Nazi takeover of America using Howard Hughes's jet-pack device seemed like an afterthought. Why were there even Nazis in this, other than that a posse of well-dressed Mafiosi (led by Paul Sorvino) didn't exactly present a credible menace? The answer, of course, is that you can inject Nazis into anything and the plot will automatically become sexier. There's really nothing wrong with this (the INDIANA JONES films and Disney's own BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS had also served up Nazis for a family audience); the problem here is that, unlike in other films, here Nazism seems more like a spice rather than an essential ingredient. Even worse, we are never offered any justification for why a wealthy and personable actor like Neville Sinclair would ever be attracted to Nazi ideology.
For a supposed action film, THE ROCKETEER features precious little action and spends way too much time on plot exposition during the first half of the movie. The romantic subplot could have been totally written out, as well as the aforementioned Nazi element. Kids like movies with stories in them, but not if those stories are overly convoluted. At the end of the day, we just want to see a guy in a rocket suit beating up villains.
(On a side note: Why would Germany be sending a passenger zeppelin around the world in 1938 - a full year after the Hindenburg disaster?) Is there anything at all good about THE ROCKETEER? Sure, there are many things: good dialogue, good music, good special effects, and (in the case of a mob goon named Lothar who looks like he could have made a cameo in DICK TRACY) excellent makeup. But none of these things can ever truly save a movie whose story is weak and whose characters (except for Sinclair) are indeed as paper-thin as the comic-book creations that inspired them.