Flyin’ High
Last weekend Margaux and I had a date night! We went out to eat at Aqua Santa in Williamsburg, which was a very pleasant little Italian restaurant. Took our chances sitting outside, despite a little wind. The food was great, I had a Carbonara, and Margaux had the special which I think was Penné a la Vodka. We were in a bit of a rush to catch a movie however, and it took a little too long for us, but on any normal night it wouldn’t have mattered.
We went into the city to see the new flick Flyboys, which I was really quite excited to see since I heard about it over a month ago. The short of it: it’s about the Escadrille in WW1 when American volunteers went to France to fly against the Germans. In the movie, the story follows some of these young soon-to-be pilots throughout, including the typical “woah is me, my father made me do it”, “I lost everything, so I came here”, “I fought the law, and then ran”, etc. etc. The one I thought was quite authentic was the French boxer, who happened to be the only black pilot, which is a little more true to life (there was in fact only one). Anyway, amongst all of this of course there was a love story, blah blah blah.
Really, the movie was about the dogfighting! These scenes kicked some ass! They modeled Neuports and Fokker DR.1s, plus some bombers and Zeppelins! The realism of the planes was well done, though I doubt the Fokkers were all painted red, and I’m sure there were other fighter planes used. For dramatic effect and to make sure those who don’t know much about this war weren’t confused, some of these liberties were taken. I’ll live. What I loved was the angles they could get since most was CG, a lot of these types of filming just wasn’t possible, even in the movie I compare this to: Memphis Belle.
Unlike Memphis Belle, however, this movie overplayed its epic-ness. The music was out of control! A gripe of both M and I. The storyline was just too cliché, and just really not that interesting. I think the writing could have been quite a bit better, which the definitely had Star-Wars-itis… great effects, bad story. Alas. That’s all right though, I still had fun 
Add comment September 28th, 2006
