View From The Top
(2002)
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This breezy comedy from director Bruno Barreto (FOUR DAYS IN SEPTEMBER) stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Donna, a young woman who dreams of escape from her rural Nevada home town. Her life changes when she sees Sally Weston (Candice Bergen) on TV talking about her book, "My Life in the Sky," and her fabulous career traveling the world as a flight attendant. Soon, the plucky Donna has a job at a small Nevada airline that caters to gamblers and drunks and, along with fellow trainees Sherry (Kelly Preston) and Christine (Christina Applegate), dreams of working the international routes on a large airline. That opportunity arises when Royalty Airlines holds a job fair where the girls are drilled by Mike Myers' hilarious former airline attendant, John Whitney. Soon, Donna and Christine find themselves in training at Royalty's home base with the manic Whitney where the ambitious Donna makes it clear that she's headed for the international routes by acing all of Whitney's tests. However, Donna finds that success doesn't come without its pitfalls when she ends up stationed in Cleveland where she strikes up a romance while still dreaming about jetting around Europe as a first class flight attendant. |
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Even an over-used and under-funny Mike Myers can't salvage this flight-attendant comedy that never leaves the terminal, let alone gets off the ground. It's not entirely the film's fault. With several in-flight comedy sequences reportedly axed to give frazzled airline companies a break, film was never likely to take flight. But, even allowing for that, it's still hard to see what first attracted Myers and top-billed Gwyneth Paltrow to this mediocre tale of a small-town stewardess who wants to fly high with a major airline. Mercifully short, the film traces her training under Myers's tutelage, plus her run-in with a cabin rival.