This is a fantastic movie. First time filmmaker Kenny Conran’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow proves once again that visual style and digital effects alone do not guarantee a good film. To be sure, Sky Captain has plenty of visual style and amazing digital effects, but it is smart enough not to assume that these would distract audiences from a weak plot or generic characters. This may not be the deepest, most moving human drama of the year, but it’s a top-notch adventure with an enthralling story and the best such characters since the Indiana Jones movies.

The film takes place in New York City in a 1930s that only exists in comics, novels, and adventure movies. This is the world of King Kong and War of the Worlds, a world filmed through cheesecloth, where frightened onlookers point heavenward towards an approaching danger, in this case giant attacking robots. Sky Captain Joe Sullivan, played by the obnoxiously handsome and likeable Jude Law, is the hero who appears in the sky the precise moment when his help is needed. Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is the industrious newspaper reporter with a vested interest in both the attacking cyborgs and Sky Captain.

None of this sounds as original or as entertaining as it plays out on the screen. And in a lesser movie, it wouldn’t be. Sky Captain is a slick and clever nod to old fashioned adventure and noir films, but even the most slick and clever homage will not sustain the interest of an audience for two hours based solely on its familiarity and any nostalgia it generates. Conran’s movie succeeds because the visual gimmickry (which is what it is if we’re honest) is enhanced and even eclipsed by a wealth of romance, humor, and a pulp plot straight out of Weird Tales.

I won’t explain the plot any further, except to mention that it involves world famous scientists, a mad scientist, and a giant rocket ship. With so many intentionally derivative visuals and events in the movie, I was startled by how engaging (if outrageous) it all was. The story moves along, quick and smart, towards a finale that is satisfying against all odds.

It’s a great movie that can, in the midst of deafening noise and chaotic action, build relationships between its players that are this strongly defined. Polly and Joe have a past, and have been at odds just as much as they have been in love. Their history is established well enough that by the end of the film, a simple glare from Polly to Joe is enough to make us laugh. Also endearing are Giovanni Ribisi as Dex, Joe’s faithful technician and Angelina Jolie as Frankie, a fellow fighter pilot and ex-fling of Joe’s.

Conran’s idea for Sky Captain was first expressed in a six minute short he created on his consumer-level Macintosh computer. So impressed was Hollywood with his visual ideas that he was given the opportunity to make the feature. (Sounds like a real rags-to-riches Hollywood story, but it should be noted that he was studying CG animation at CalArts at the time.) The risk on the part of Fox and Paramount paid off, big time. Hopefully, when all is said and done, the lesson of Sky Captain to the big studios will be “take a chance on the little guy.”

Go see this movie.