"View From the Top"

Rated PG 13

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Applegate, Mike Meyers

Directed By: Bruno Barreto

1/2 Gus Head

The Oscars are finished and the studios are already throwing out their garbage.

The doldrums of early spring are here, and "View From the Top" aims to make it abundantly clear that the midseason crapfest is out in force. Despite funny previews (mainly due to Mike Myers' bit part being stretched for all it's worth), this hardly qualifies as a comedy. C'mon, these guys aren't even trying.

Gwyneth Paltrow stars as Donna, a little girl from Silver Springs, N.M., who has lived her whole life in a trailer but has dreamed of bigger things. After her high school sweetheart dumps her, she sees Murphy Brown's Candice Bergen on TV as Sally, the flight attendant who made it. Donna decides the skies are for her and gets a job on a sleazy little Las Vegas airline that ferries around drunks and gamblers.

After a while on the planes and one semi-funny scene during which she thinks the plane is going down, Donna gets used to everything and starts to make friends. Kelly Preston plays the flight attendant who trained Donna, and Christina Applegate plays Donna's very own trainee. Donna also meets Steve (Mark Ruffalo) who becomes her love interest and the object of jealousy for Applegate's character for the rest of the film.

Eventually the three girls realize that the little airline isn't for them and go to a job fair from Royalty Airlines, the very airline Donna's idol Sally works for. After an introduction to Mike Meyers' instructor John Whitney, the only consistently funny part of the film, Paltrow and Applegate's characters are invited to Royalty Airlines training school, and Preston's character is left behind for insulting Meyers' eye.

The scenes in the training school are meant to be more heartwarming than funny, but they fail in this as well, and with a stereotypical gay male flight attendant (Joshua Malina) heaving out predictable joke ("Just think of me as one of the girls") after predictable joke, the viewer begins to realize that "View From the Top" just isn't the "Airplane" knockoff the previews had it billed as being.

Despite being the best in her class, Donna is assigned to Royalty Express out of Cleveland rather than the first-class international for which she was aiming. Coincidentally, Applegate's character, who did horribly in school, gets the in-demand New York route. While the express route doesn't suit Donna at all, she meets up with Steve again, and true love begins to blossom. Soon, though, Donna's test scores are revealed to be more than they seem, and she soon has the option of flying first-class international like she wanted. The true meat of the plot comes in at the late hour of the movie when it is revealed that Donna must decide between getting her dream job and staying with the one she loves.

After everything is resolved, the credits roll, and what's this - a blooper reel. Virtually every funny scene from the commercials is on the shorts segment at the end. A cheat if ever there was one. So, in "View From the Top" we have a sham comedy that really is a poor girl done well story (not a good one either) with a cheesy love story (also one dimensional and bad) thrown in. Where is the comedy? At the end, right after the viewer has spent 90 minutes in tear-jerking agony, wondering where the funny went.

"View From the Top" isn't worth the gum under the seat at the theater, let alone a big-star big-dollar production. When there are so many good, ignored movies in all the categories this film tries to fit in, there is no reason for this garbage to be out there. Despite decent acting, and even Mike Meyers, this plane is going down fast.