Starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Rated PG.

Come with us now to a land of giant flying machines, resolute square-jawed men, and peppery dames in trench coats and rakish hats. Take a long look back at a big-shouldered vision of the future, one that excites not only a sense of nostalgia but also a notion of how things should be. It's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a tribute to the quaint entertainments of yesteryear made with technology from 2005.

The fast-moving film, expanded from a short that writer-director Kerry Conran brought to producer Jon Avnet, is touted as being the first-ever production with a cast performing entirely before blue screens--everything else is computer-generated or otherwise Photoshopped into being.

The effect is oddly reassuring because it reflects the soundstage artificiality that characterized Hollywood and British films of the 1930s and '40s. These are heavily referenced here, both in visual cues--there is a clip from The Wizard of Oz, which plays thematically with the story as well--and in the wisecracking dialogue, which combines the can-do spirit of war-era adventures and Saturday matinees with the cynical knowingness of the film noirs that followed.

Hell, with her waterfall 'do and blood-red lipstick--one of the few colours standing out against the desaturated sepia tones of the film's flawless design--Gwyneth Paltrow even looks like Veronica Lake. She plays Polly Perkins, the latest in a long line of alliteratively named newspaper reporters. As befitting the uppity gals of the era evoked, she's willing to do anything to get a story.

Her adversary/love interest is Sky Captain, more simply known as Joe (and known to us as Jude Law), one of those forthright vigilantes who--only in the movies--operate apart from any military or government establishment but never make a wrong moral choice.

The enemy they team up against is a mysterious Dr. Totenkopf, who has been kidnapping German scientists, the better to unleash giant machines of destruction upon an unsuspecting world. (You'd think that one of those scientists could have reminded our heroes that the bad doctor's name is German for "death's head".) When we see the villain, however, he looks remarkably like the handsome, open-faced Laurence Olivier. Although this isn't exactly like a deceased Fred Astaire being forced to sell vacuums, it does raise some tricky questions about identity theft, not to mention Screen Actors Guild wages. By the way, the cast features not one but two women with eye patches: Angelina Jolie, with an English accent, and Ling Bai, mute but with superpowers.

In the end, Conran can't quite decide if he's riffing on fascism, a burgeoning technocracy, or standard-issue evil. And the exchanges between our two romantic leads, although perfectly executed, like everything else in this "world", lack the crackle of originality. On the other hand, who needs to be insightful or original when there's still so much great old stuff to plunder?