View From the Top

To the endless soundtrack of grating girl-empowerment country music ditties, Gwyneth Paltrow crash-lands in this inept and lifeless comedy, in which she plays a Nevada-bred white-trash ditz who dreams of a "glamorous" life as a flight attendant. Edited down to what feels like an endless 87 minutes (a running time this short is a telltale sign of desperate post-production rescue attempts), View From the Top finds few fresh jokes in its formulaic plot (think Legally Blonde at 30,000 feet) that forces Paltrow to choose between the man she loves and a prestigious stewardess gig (apparently it never occurred to writer Eric Wald or director Bruno Barreto that as a flight attendant she could fly to see her boyfriend almost any time she wants, but the plot is the least of this picture's problems). Unenthusiastic actors plod through embarrassingly stale comedic set pieces, shallow stereotypes, and hammy throwaway scenes of indulgent improvisation (Mike Myers has a lazy cameo as a flight attendant trainer with a lazy eye). Come to think of it the one scene of aspiring stewardess interviews in Catch Me If You Can is exponentially funnier than every laugh in this entire movie all rolled together. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include the 10-minute “History of the Flight Attendant” featurette, the six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette “A Journey Inside,” a three-minute featurette on the music of the film, and trailers. Bottom line: a piddling extras package for a piddling comedy.] (R. Blackwelder)