View from the Top (PG-13, 2003)

VIEW FROM THE TOP stars Gwenyth Paltrow as Donna, the daughter of a much-married former showgirl who lives in a small town in Nevada. She dreams of a bigger world, and is looking forward to moving to Tucson with her boyfriend. But he breaks up with her in a birthday card (he explains that they don't sell breaking up cards). She thinks she will be stuck there forever until she sees Sally Watson (Candice Bergen), the most famous flight attendant in the world, on television. Now Donna's dream has direction. She gets a job as a flight attendant on a commuter airline for gamblers. But she wants more -- she wants to do first class on international flights, like Sally. So she applies to Royal Airlines, and her life changes forever.

It's hard to imagine what attracted such a high-powered cast to this forgettable little movie about a small-town girl with a dream. It's almost a tribute to the movies we like to think of as being from a simpler era, but there is no ironic distance and no attempt to re-invent the genre for another era. It's like an episode of That Girl. Will there be setbacks for Donna to be plucky about? Will there be a dreamboat to make it hard to take that job when it does come through? Will there be comic relief in the form of a quippy gay guy and a teacher with high standards and an eye problem? Oh, so you've seen this movie before? Me, too.

This is a cotton candy movie, and it melts away into sticky nothing almost before you can taste the sugar. There are some mildly funny moments and the performances are fine, but they don't make up for its lack of anything particularly engaging in its characters or story. The coming attraction has all the best moments and the credit sequence outtakes have more vitality than the rest of the movie.

Studio: Miramax
Director: Bruno Barreto
Cast: Candice Bergen, Christina Applegate, Gwyneth Paltrow
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 87 minutes
Theatrical release: March 21, 2003
DVD release: September 9, 2003
MPAA Rating: PG-13
MPAA explanation: language/sexual references