I'm afraid we're standing face to face with another League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that is to say it looks really good and you trust the bankable star names but you leave the cinema with a sense of emptiness and longing for what could, and more importantly, should have been.

The makers seem to have spent all of their time and effort on the admittedly spectacular look and feel of the film but to the detriment of the plot, which suffers for being over elaborate and confusing at times.

The story, from what I can gather, involves a relentlessly mad scientist Dr. Totenkopf (cameo by Laurence Olivier via manipulation of archive footage), whose plan is to create a "World of Tomorrow" and destroy the one of today.

He has an army of ultra high-tech robots that just don't mix with the 1930's setting and only one Joe 'Sky Captain' Sullivan (Law), hindered by pesky but pretty reporter Polly Perkins (Paltrow), to get in his way.

It's supposed to be a throwback to the Saturday matinees of old but, while the dialogue and action is in tune with this theory, it actually spends more time trying to echo franchises like Indiana Jones and Star Wars - I swear at one point Joe and Polly end up on the Dagobah System (Yoda’s home planet).

There is some solace in enjoyable turns from Giovanni Ribisi (Saving Private Ryan) who plays Dex – Sky Captain's head of research and development - and a leather-clad Angelina Jolie who saves Joe's bacon and reveals Polly's jealous side ("She's some kind of woman!").

But I think the task was too much for first-time director Kerry Conran to handle. It's the only time a film has been made entirely in front of a blue screen (everything but the actors, their costumes and props are digitally created) and everything that's good about the film is cinematic rather than dramatic.

I'd heard some pretty fabulous things about the special effects so perhaps my enjoyment was hampered by my own high expectations... The groundbreaking technology might see Sky Captain's world tremble but I was left at a standstill.

Dominic Bloch