View from the Top (2003)

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Applegate
Director: Bruno Barreto

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Miramax

Review Posted: 3.28.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Craig Younkin.

"The Overall View Is Not Too Exciting"

View from the Top is a film that aims for the very bottom; it is the kind of careless fluff piece that studios usually slide right under the public's noses faster than anyone can ask the question, "Isn't Gwyneth Paltrow in that?”

She is in fact in this film, continuing her streak of poor choices since winning the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. Where Shallow Hal was just a bad film, this is just an inconsequential one that requires the talent involved to slum it; and when you’re talking about a supporting cast like Mike Myers and Candice Bergen, you’re talking major slumming.

This story centers on Donna Jenson (Paltrow), a young woman from a Nevada trailer park who dreams of becoming a flight attendant. She gets a job working for Sierra airlines, a rat hole whose planes are covered in shag carpeting and whose stewardesses (politically correct or not) look like tramps. When a higher-class airline must land in the Sierra airport, Donna and her friends overhear its attendants mocking Sierra, which inspires them to go after the respect they deserve.

They join the Royalty Airlines training program, a class led by John Whitney (Mike Myers), a testy steward who never got the chance to fly because of his crossed eye. While completing the program, Donna meets her idol, a former flight attendant named Sally Weston (Candice Bergen) who wrote a book called "My Life in the Sky." Sally tells Donna that the beauty part of the job is the luxurious destinations, such as Paris and New York. She sees a little bit of herself in Donna and inspires her to reach for those destinations as best she can. Only with luxury comes sacrifice, as Donna must choose between living a dream or staying with the movie’s bland, barely developed love interest, played by Mark Ruffalo.

View from the Top is by far the lightest film treatment so far this year (even lighter than How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days). A story about a woman who must choose between being a flight attendant or staying with the man of her dreams is one of the airiest storylines out there, and the fact that this is a romantic comedy makes it pretty obvious what the final result will be. Only the path leading to that result is filled with desperate attempts at humor and a romance that if not for the story's obviousness would appear to have no chemistry at all. Plus, the only actor in this movie who appears to be giving any kind of effort is Mike Myers, who is given nothing funny to do or say, but improvises his heart out to the point where he is occasionally amusing.

The only other things to recommend in this film are Gwyneth Paltrow’s legs and a catfight between her and Christina Applegate. Other than that, View from the Top is a film that barely reaches 87 minutes of running time and it struggles to even find much in its bland story to cover that amount, thus the many musical montages. This view of a flight attendant who likes to dream will be forgotten before you know it.

Rating: 2 out of 4 / Grade: C

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