by JOANNE LATIMER

View From the Top is The Good Girl meets Airplane!, economy class. What does that leave us? A decent comedy of the you-go-girl variety about an ambitious flight attendant escaping her destiny in a trailer park. Her tackiness is strip-mined for laughs, yes, but there is so much good will in this film that you forgive director Bruno Barreto almost anything. He cut every hint of mean spiritedness from the script, fearing it would kill his story's buoyancy. He was right; the result is light.

View From the Top stars Gwyneth Paltrow. I should say, the film stars Gwyneth Paltrow and her midriff. The camera tracks her torso like a documentarian, capturing every turn of her trunk. Paltrow plays a crop-top addict struggling to improve her lot as a stewardess - back when that term was PC and people who didn't fly considered the job glamorous.

Paltrow starts at the bottom, at a local airline shuttling gamblers and drunks around the States. Christina Applegate and Kelly Preston play her fellow flight attendants, wearing vinyl mini skirts and lots of leopard skin. Eventually the girls apply to a better airline, where they train under Mike Myers. Sadly, his scenes peddle one gag: he's cross-eyed (I haven't seen a bit over-worked like that since the Windex jokes in My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

Candice Bergen is perfectly restrained as Paltrow's mentor, a dazzling, retired stewardess who snagged her wealthy husband while serving him in First Class. Snagging a wealthy husband is the true goal of all flight attendants, we quickly glean, yet Bergen's character is never played as a beady-eyed angler. There's no edge here, though there could be, and instead we get a feathery comedy about following your heart. That's okay. View From the Top doesn't claim to be anything other than a nice little vehicle for Gwyneth Paltrow. It's the perfect way to kill two hours on a trans-Atlantic flight, as it should be. :

View From the Top opens Friday, March 21

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