View From The Top (2003) Movie Review

Bruno Barreto's View from the Top is a light comedy that offers heart, but lacks soul and structure. The film, which centers on an inspiring flight attendant's personal dreams, has been one of those shelved movies since the attacks of September 11th. The production was actually completed before the attacks, but since then has been gutted in the editing room and bounced around many release dates.

The story follows a small town beauty named Donna (Paltrow), who dreams of getting out of Silver Springs, Nevada by becoming a flight attendant. Even though she has never flown before, Donna's likeable personality helps land her a job with a small crummy airline. She begins to learn the ropes and builds friendships with her mentor like co-worker Sherry (Preston) as well as the hickey giving Christine (Applegate). Looking to take a step further, the three all apply for jobs with the world's top airline, Royalty. Donna quickly becomes the elite of her training class with Christine struggling to comprehend its purpose. The trainees are taught by John Whitney (Myers), who has a crooked eye and is extremely hard on his students. Throughout her road to being a top-notch flight attendant, Donna develops a relationship with a law student named Ted (Ruffalo) and gets advice from her flight school hero, Sally (Bergen). She is left with career and life decisions to make as to what is best choice for her future and happiness.

Eric Wald's screenplay had to have more depth to the characters that what the editing room has left in the released film version. Some of the characters just arise and fall out of the story as if the audience knows what already has happened to them. Rob Lowe's Steve shows up as a co-pilot in the film's first act, which might be a love interest or a backstabber for Donna. However, after two scenes, Steve never resurfaces in the film. Ditto for Kelly Preston's Sherry. In the third act, Donna arrives at a fellow flight attendant named Paige's house for some holiday comfort and cheer. The audience first meets and sees Paige when she opens the door to let Donna in. I have no idea of where the character came from. The overall script isn't too intriguing or fashionable, but I believe the extreme editing has left out a lot of things that where critical to the characters of the story.

The editing once again hampers the direction by Bruno Barreto, but I believe he was also unsure of what he wanted to capture with View from the Top. It almost seemed at moments that the film wanted to be a warm goofy and colorful comedy like Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion (1997) While at other times it wanted to be a soap operish coming of age movie like Sweet Home Alabama (2002). Barreto is a director that knows romantic comedy; his work in the delightful Bossa Nova (2000) proves that. View from the Top wanted to be many things that are more or less lost in the film. Barreto does capture the warmth of the story though.

Gwyneth Paltrow is a lot better of an actress than what she is given to work with in this film. It seems that the role of Donna would have been written for an actress like Cameron Diaz or Ashley Judd. Paltrow does what she can with the role and delivers an emotionally bright performance. Mike Myers surfaces as the somewhat annoying crooked eye instructor John Whitney. Thought the constant "eye" references become tiring, Myers is too great a talent to at least not get a few laughs out of the audience. Christina Applegate plays a usual role as the not-too-bright best friend Christine. Outside of Paltrow, the best performance in the film is by Mark Ruffalo, who plays Donna's boyfriend Ted. Ruffalo, who was so good in You Can Count on Me (2000), continues to show that his natural acting makes him a very likeable leading man.

View from the Top is a soft comedy about a young woman searching to find her place in life. Though the feelings of the story are unleashed, the lack of structure, consistency and bad editing painfully hurt the film.