By RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: *)
It's a movie about following your destiny. It's a movie about choosing between the career ambitions of the head and romantic urges of the heart. It's a movie that attempts, where so many others have failed, to show that flight attendants are people too.
It's awful. Not
offensively bad, mind you, just ponderous, tepid, unfunny, simple-minded, dated, garish and it demands but a single neuron to carry the afterthought: what is a supposed Hollywood A-lister like Gwyneth Paltrow doing in this?
It is a question her career - see also Duets, Shallow Hal-keeps asking. Though this was made a few years back and delayed after September 11 made flightdeck comedies a no-no, so perhaps it was part of that bad patch.
In the same way that Paltrow's accent fluctuates depending on what time zone her character, Donna, is in, it's a film that can't decide what it wants to be - feelgood female empowerment drama, romantic comedy or a wacky farce giving Mike Myers the excuse to make funny faces as an optically challenged airline staff trainer and Candice Bergen to ham it up dreadfully.
Bergen plays the world's most famous air hostess who acts as a mentor to Paltrow's smalltown gal, who sees becoming a trolley-dolly as escape from her dead-end existence.
The romantic interest is Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count On Me), a nice guy also looking for a bit of direction in life. They meet, but Donna's airline training means they part, they meet again, they part due to those career pressures, they ... and that's it really, along with some business with a fellow flight attendant (Christina Applegate) whose career takes flight while Donna is stuck on glamour-free domestic routes.
It drones along, with a scenic stopover in Paris, allowing a chic but lonely Paltrow to trot around the streets in a curious Audrey Hepburn impression.
Anyone enduring this to its groan-inducing end deserves air miles. And if this comes on during your next international flight, please fight the temptation to make use of those emergency exits.
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo, Mike Myers, Candice Bergen
Director: Bruno Barreto Rating: PG (coarse language)
Running time: 87 mins
Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas