To say that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a mere trifle is to misspeak, for there is nothing "mere" to it. It is a massive candy shop of trifles, trifles everywhere, elaborately decorated, lovingly presented — and ultimately empty of anything but the blissful experience of having consumed them.

Visually, the movie is everything that a lover of pulp magazine tropes could love. On this, alone, the movie merits viewing on the big screen. Robots of every shape and size menace and march. Aircraft of different sorts soar, zoom, and more. Cities, both modern and hidden, are art deco wonders. Every scene looks like a cover of Amazing Science Fiction Stories during the 30s, with airships and rocket ships to boot.

That the visuals are so incredibly rich can help mask that there's not much more behind the curtain. The action is relentless, though more to move us on to a new scene with new wonders. There's some recurring humor, some decent acting by the principals, but, frankly, Indiana Jones (which is what most often came to mind) looks like Citizen Kane compared to the depth, characterization, or plotting of SCatWoT. Things just happen, with the barest veneer of rhyme or reason. A freaking pantheon of deus ex machina outs serves merely to keep us from wondering for more than a few seconds how Our Heroes will survive. (Sometimes they don't even bother with that — folks get captured, then escape, all off screen with the barest of explanations). Characters appear and disappear (and sometimes reappear again), places are visited and departed, with nothing (not even the the final scene) providing any sense of closure — which makes the film seem to end almost abruptly, it's biggest weakness.

Indeed, it's amusing that one of the ongoing bits is Gwyneth Paltrow's spunky reporter (out-Lois Laning Lois Lane in all categories) and her unwillingness to take one of her last few photographs for fear that they'll encounter something even more wonderful — because they always do, which seems to be at least half the purpose of the film, the other half being a homage to every cool thing from that era of SF magazines. Plot almost gets in the way, and is just an excuse to show off how amazing the fx are. And they are, to an extent that you end up not caring why the bad guy is doing X, but then turns out to be doing Y.