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I'm not sure if a lot of people remember that when Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was released there was a great deal of hype around the movie. It looked to be a sleeper, but quickly became a potential blockbuster as more media outlets found out about the movie's ground-breaking approach. Then the movie just sort of came and went.

I first saw it in the theater with a friend of mine and my older son, who was 5 years old at the time. I liked it well enough, but I remember leaving the theater without much of an impression of it. There were very few standout cool moments or genuinely funny lines. It was like eating a bunch of cotton candy. Sure it was sweet and tasted good at first, but when you're done it feels like you just snacked on air. The movie had no real substance.

I knew my son liked it, so I picked it up on DVD recently so he and I could watch it again. Oddly enough, I enjoyed it a lot more the second time through. It does have its moments, just few and far inbetween. I think a big problem with the movie is that, like so many modern movies, the filmmakers try to hard to contrive situations where the hero can't actually fight back. This leads us directly into G.I.Joe or A-Team territory, where we have lots of bombs and guns going off but no one seems to get hurt. Oddly enough, in this movie people are getting hurt and yet the hero can never seem to do much to stop it. I think it detracts from the overall movie experience.

Yet the visuals were just as compelling and unique the second time around and the casting choices were just superb. Yeah, the story is kind of subpar but hardly horrible.

In my memory though, it seems like I didn't think of it too highly. It's as if I started to like the film less over time despite having only seen it that once.

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