View from the Top

reviewed by Dave

If you want to see just how long 80 minutes can feel, give View from the Top a spin in your DVD player. Yikes, this movie is bad. Here’s the setup:

Once upon a time, Gwenyth Paltrow (Hook - Yes, really, Hook – she played Young Wendy) lived in a trailer park with her mom and her mom’s long string of abusive boyfriends. Gwenyth has always dreamed of breaking out and being successful in the big world outside her trailer park. She thought it was going to happen with her boyfriend after they had finished high school and got a big promotion at his job, but he dumped her on her birthday.

At an all-time low, Gwenyth wanders into a bar for some liquid comfort, and happens to see Candice Bergen (1978’s The End of the World in Our Usual Bed in a Night Full of Rain) talking about how people should follow their dreams, and for Candice, that meant becoming a stewardess. Gwenyth decides that she, too, will be a stewardess.

That Gwenyth can’t come up with her own dream to chase is never mentioned, but it provides important insight into the rest of the film as Director Bruno Baretto manages to create one of the most cliché-filled films I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, the rest of View from the Top follows Gwenyth as she chases her dreams. Along for the ride is rapidly-aging Christina Applegate (Jaws of Satan) as a fellow stewardess, and love interest Mark Ruffalo (Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur). It’s debatable who has more chemistry - Gwenyth and Mark, or Gwenyth and her male homosexual flight attendant friend.

View from the Top seems to settle into a light dramedy that’s one part quirky to 10 parts completely dull, but then Mike Meyers (So I Married an Axe Murderer) shows up as an instructor at the flight attendant school Gwenyth attends, and suddenly I have no idea what this movie is trying to be. Meyers’ role throws View from the Top into farce mode. From the bright blue shirt to the bum eye to the over-the-top acting, nothing about his performance gels with what any of the other actors have been doing in this movie.

This dovetails with another problem: a sudden shift in art direction. “Wait a minute,” Jaime asks me, “is this supposed to be a period movie?” Indeed, the distracting day-glo colors and 60’s art design make View from the Top look more like Down with Love or, perhaps not coincidentally, an Austin Powers movie.

But it’s not until the last reel where View from the Top completely drops out of the sky. When Gwenyth goes to a Christmas party and sees a friend who has a husband and children, will she decide that despite her success, she’s really lonely? Will Candace Bergen show up to help her find a way to get back to her man? Will Gwenyth arrive at the house of said man, thinking he’s not home, give a poignant speech to someone else about her feelings for the man, ask the person to tell the man that she stopped by, only to have the man announce off-camera, “No need.” Then approach her as he’s saying, “I’m right here, and I heard everything you said.”?

Hmm. Signs point to yes.

Just when you think everything’s done and you wonder how it can still be the year 2003, we get an outtake reel, followed by the cast singing a special movie-themed version of “We are Family”. As terrible as that was, I do have to give it credit for inspiring me to set the land-speed record for how fast a person can hit the “Stop” button on their DVD remote.

I really thought that The Haunted Mansion was going to be an easy pick for the worst movie I’ve seen this year. Congratulations, View from the Top. You’ve given Eddie Murphy some serious competition.