by MALCOLM FRASER

Someone in Hollywood evidently got the idea that what the world needs at this particular moment in time is a World War I fighter-pilot drama. Presumably, that someone is currently gazing at a Flyboys poster, shaking their head, and wondering: “What the hell was I thinking?”

Based on a true story (or “the true story,” as a title card none-too-grammatically announces), Flyboys tells the tale of a ragtag group of American youths who decide, in 1917 before the U.S. had joined the war, to go fly planes for the French army. James Franco (perhaps best remembered as the Green Goblin’s resentful son in the Spider-Man movies) is the lead as brooding cowpoke Blaine Rawlings. The rest of the pilots are cardboard stock characters—noble token black guy Skinner (Abdul Salis), haughty rich kid Lowry (Tyler Labine) and several others who, truthfully, are difficult to distinguish, especially when they’re all wearing pilot hats and goggles. Perpetually slumming Jean Reno plays the unrealistically kind-hearted Captain Thenault, and Jennifer Decker is a French peasant girl in a groan-inducing romantic subplot.

David Ward, one of the three screenwriters, won an Oscar for writing The Sting back in 1973. Either that was a fluke, or he’s fallen off hard. There’s not much of a plot to speak of—the flyboys get into a bunch of aerial skirmishes with the Germans and act out their personal dramas in between battles. Viewers can amuse themselves by predicting which characters will make it out alive, but the script doesn’t make it very hard.

The only remotely interesting parts are the airplane battles, not least because of the shockingly primitive technology the pilots had to work with. For this reason, Flyboys could be of interest to military-history buffs, but I had the distinct impression that historical accuracy was not followed to the letter, especially when Franco goes on not one but two unauthorized solo rescue missions, for which he receives nothing more than an avuncular talking-to by Reno. At any rate, the moments of aerial excitement fail to atone for the lumbering mass of predictable clichés that surround them.

Flyboys opens Friday, Sept. 22

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