It has been a while since I’ve heard about anybody winning a Darwin Award. That dubious honor goes to a person who accidentally removes themselves from the gene pool through a manner which is darkly humorous. Consider the recipient who “won” after flying their jet-propelled Impala into a cliff face at 300 MPH. Watching 1991’s The Rocketeer, I felt certain Billy Campbell could be a candidate and was surprised he survived to the end credits.
It is the 1930’s, and Campbell is an aerial daredevil who chances into a jetpack designed by, and stolen from, Howard Hughes. The first test flight has Campbell and buddy Alan Arkin fitting the machine onto the back of a statue they cut down. Seems to me it would have been easier, and less destructive, to use mannequin weighted down with something to approximate Campbell’s weight. Instead, they end up ducking and dodging some with the weight of several cannonballs as it flies around out of control.
Then there’s the helmet Arkin makes for Campbell. This all-metal thing looks uncomfortable, hot and heavy. It has what looks like a rudder in the back, and I thought it was purely an aesthetic decision, as if Arkin was trying to mimic the appearance of the classic Mercury figure. Instead, that is meant to control the wearer’s flight path, by changing their direction with the turn of a head. If that is the purpose, then it seems to me a good crosswind could snap Campbell’s head right off. The helmet also looks ridiculous, with Arkin’s response to Campbell’s question as to how he looks in it being “like a hood ornament.”
Gangster Paul Sorvino and his henchmen have killed to try to retrieve the jetpack, all of this under the command of Timothy Dalton, a top Hollywood actor. It is obvious he is modelled on Error Flynn. I don’t know if Flynn lived in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, but it is made to look like Dalton does—even if it is just a set made to look like the living room of that famous abode. You can see more of that house in such pictures as House on Haunted Hill.
It will turn out Dalton wants this invention so as to equip the Nazis with them and destroy America. This is communicated through an interesting film Jennifer Connelly stumbles upon, the style of which seems to suggest the Reich had Flash animation many decades before the rest of the world. If they really had that technology then, I know we would have lost the propaganda war.
Connelly sees it because she found the mandatory secret room in Dalton’s house, which makes you wonder what Wright was thinking when he put that there. And she is only there because she and Campbell are an item and, when Dalton realizes that pilot has the invention, he believes he can get to it through her. I was just amazed Connelly would have anything to do with Campbell after his ineptitude when sneaking around on the set of a movie where she’s an extra leads to a spectacular collapse of scenery and her consequent firing. This, after he had already been dismissive of her desire to become a film actor.
The performances are largely perfunctory (perfuncmances?). Connelly is above the material, though she does have a great femme fatale look which would serve her well in Dark City and Mulholland Falls. Arkin could sleepwalk through this role, which he doesn’t exactly do, yet his accent comes and goes. Dalton appears to be having fun chewing the scenery, as the role of the villain requires. Campbell is a blank slate and, frankly, anybody could have taken his place.
Anywho, things crash into each other a lot and things blow up, as they are wont to do in movies such as this. There’s even a fight inside, and eventually on top of, a zeppelin. That explodes quite spectacularly. Alas, the bluescreen footage incorporated into that, and other sequences, is not as impressive. That is surprising given Disney’s deep pockets. It is of a level which would have been more acceptable five to ten years earlier, and is especially poor in the moments of Campbell in flight.
There will be a great deal of that in this highly kinetic movie, also much frantic running around on foot. One chase takes us through the obligatory industrial kitchen, and I wondered if people working in such places ever wonder nothing like that ever happens where they are employed. But then I also wonder if taxi drivers even wonder why nobody ever jumps in and orders them to follow another cab. Perhaps I have seen too many movies.
Something odd about this picture is it assumes the target audience for such a picture in 1991 would have even the most remote interest in the movie industry and L.A. area of the 1930’s. There is what appears to be an authentic recreation of nightspot The South Seas Club. A building shaped like a dog standing upright recreates The Bulldog Cafe, long since demolished in real life. Nowadays, I would find this attempt to recreate this period interesting, but I wouldn’t have cared less at the time of the film ‘s original release. One would have needed to see some deep cuts from the 1930’s to realize the terrifying thug by ironically named actor Tiny Ron is made up to look like horror actor Rondo Hatton.
Also typical of this kind of thing, there is a fair amount of humor, though nothing especially noteworthy. A bit with how the last four letters of the original “HOLLYWOODLAND” sign were destroyed was a hair too cute. There’s a bit of a recurring gag concerning the moniker bequeathed upon Campbell by promoter Jon Polito. Looking for inspiration, he sees a sign for Pioneer Petroleum. Alas, among the names he did not choose are The Pioneer and Mr. Petroleum. And Connelly isn’t impressed when Campbell reveals his secret identity to her: “The Rock-eh-who?” I also liked a bit where the thief who left behind the jetpack discovered by Arkin and Campbell switches it out with a vacuum cleaner, leading Howard Hughes (played by Terry O’Quinn) to conclude of the replacement device: “Thanks to your diligence of the FBI, this vacuum cleaner won’t fall into the wrong hands.”
The Rocketeer is passable enough entertainment, though slight enough I felt I started forgetting parts of it as soon as the end credits rolled. It is obsessed with a period from nearly a half-century earlier, which would have zero appeal to its target audience. In a very minor way, it is eerily prescient, in that O’Quinn, as Hughes, says, “I’ll remind you boys, I don’t work for the government. I cooperate with them at my discretion.” If Hughes was alive today, he would probably be the head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Dir: Joe Johnston
Starring Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton
Watched on blu-ray