View from the Top

Directed by Bruno Barreto, View from the Top follows Gwyneth Paltrow’s Donna Jensen as she successfully becomes a flight attendant with a low-rent airline and, eventually, begins a relationship with a hunky law student (Mark Ruffalo’s Ted Stewart). Filmmaker Barreto, working from a script by Eric Wald, delivers a romcom that begins with a certain amount of promise but eventually becomes rather interminable, as the movie, which feels long even at 87 minutes, has been suffused with a whole host of aggressively misguided attributes that cumulatively transform it into something of an ordeal – which is a shame, certainly, given that the picture boasts affable work from an exceedingly eclectic cast that includes, among others, Kelly Preston, Rob Lowe, and Candice Bergen. (Mike Myers’ wildly over-the-top turn as an oddball instructor vacillates between hilarious and infuriating to an almost equal degree, ultimately.) View from the Top‘s progressively underwhelming atmosphere is exacerbated by a second half brimming with generic pop music and eye-rollingly conventional plot twists, including, in terms of the latter, the dreaded fake breakup, and the whole thing concludes on a palpably anticlimactic note that effectively confirms its place as a rather disappointing misfire.

** out of ****