March 23, 2003 – Can the golden girl who charmed the film world in "Shakespear in Love," (and came home with an Oscar) four short years ago, be the hapless flight attendant in "View from the Top?"
Miramax Films thinks so. However, most critics beg to differ. Gwyneth Paltrow is meant for better things, they say; even the golden Gwyneth can't drag this chestnut out of the fire.
Paltrow plays Donna Benson, a small town girl from Silver Springs, Nevada who one day sees a TV interview with best selling author Sally Weston (Candice Bergen) about her exciting life as a flight attendant.
Oops. It's off to the wild blue skies of a small commuter airline, a small step, but then she graduates to the biggies, international carriers. (The movie must have been made several years ago and just released, according to one observer who notes the full meals in front of the passengers.)
Anyhow, through a series of ups and downs (airline humor) Donna discovers that life in the big skies isn't all it's cracked up to be. She finds she is lonesome, which critics say the audiences may well be themselves, in search of a reason to sit through the film.
Chicago Tribune movie critic Mark Caro says, " 'View' imposes its own superficiality on its characters. Donna and her fellow stewardess Christine (Christina Applegate) could be cousins to Romy and Michele (the goofy Valley girls of "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion"), but the new movie presents their tackiness straight-up."
Donna gets a boyfriend, Ted (Mark Ruffalo) who Caro describes as "scruffily lovable." It also introduces Kelly Preston as a fellow flight attendant and Rob Lowe as a dashing co-pilot, but Caro says, "they inexplicably disappear early on, as if their contracts didn't provide for scenes beyond the 40-minute mark."
The one and half hour movie is directed by Bruno Barreto and written by Eric Wald. It is rated PG-13 for language and sexual references.
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