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'Flyboys': Faux historical silliness

By BOB TOWNSEND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Watching "Flyboys," it's hard not to giggle and think of Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.

That's just how silly and cartoonish this melodrama about the experiences of World War I aviators in France is. And that's a shame, because the story of the all-American, all-volunteer Lafayette Escadrille squadron has the right stuff to make a tale of rugged realism on the order of the gritty World War II classic "Twelve O'Clock High." But director Tony Bill (who's mostly done television lately) is no Henry King, and his pretty boy star, James Franco, is no Gregory Peck.

MGM

'Flyboys'

The verdict: A cartoonish melodrama about WW I aces that never gets off the ground.

Director: Tony Bill
Starring: James Franco, Jean Reno, David Ellison, Martin Henderson, Jennifer Decker
Run time: 134 minutes
Release date: Sept. 22, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for war action violence and some sexual content.
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On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

Franco, maybe best known for his role on TV's "Freaks and Geeks," has starred in two other really bad films this year, "Tristan & Isolde" and "Annapolis." In "Flyboys," he plays Blaine Rawlings, an iconic cowboy character from Texas who flees to France after losing the family ranch and having a run-in with the law.

Rawlings joins a group of young misfits who have very little in common except the sudden realization that, flying flimsy wood-and-canvas biplanes in aerial combat against the Germans, their life expectancy is something like three-to-six weeks.

There's the rich kid (Tyler Labine) who disgraced his father by getting kicked out of Harvard. The Midwestern idealist (Philip Winchester) who wants be a hero but might be a coward. The expatriate black boxer (Abdul Salis) who can't escape racism. And the guy with a secret (David Ellison). Those too familiar characters are commanded by a French captain (Jean Reno) who pulls out all the tough and tender military movie clichés to train them to fly and fight together. Oh yeah, there's also a lover for Rawlings, an ethereal French girl named Lucienne (Jennifer Decker).

With gauzy cinematography and a syrupy, insinuating score, Bill portrays the French countryside around the Bar-le-Duc airfield near Verdun as a picturesque playground. Between missions, the flyboys stay in a sprawling mansion with a pet lion — that is, when they're not hanging out at the base bar or the local brothel. In only one scene do we catch a glimpse of the horrors of the trench warfare that raged from 1914 to 1918.

Of course, airplane buffs will be lured by the promise of spectacular dogfights. And the colorful, computer-generated French Nieuport biplanes, German Fokker triplanes and period bombers and zeppelins do look pretty good. Problem is, sitting in front of a blue screen and pretending to fly, Franco and the boys don't exactly convey the chivalrous "knights of the air" quality of real-life aces such as Eddie Rickenbacker or Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

And after hanging through more than two hours of this faux historical silliness, you just might be tempted to make like Snoopy and shout, "Curse you, Tony Bill."