It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Dennis Quaid in Tights! Well, Not Quite.

Movie Review: Flight of the Phoenix ('04 version).

Here's how this one goes: I saw the previews way back when, thought I ought to see it, mostly forgot about it, then Netflixed it. One of these days I'll learn that if I'm reading a description of the movie, think it sounds kinda dumb, it most likely will be.

Still, I thought. Dennis Quaid. Giovanni Ribisi. Right? Yeah... So, apparently none of the writers have ever watched one of those episodes of Man Vs. Wild where Bear is off in the desert. Nor have they paid much attention to any of those websites that tell you all these creative ways of not dying in the desert. (The imdb "goofs" bit is fun reading, by the way)

Here's the jist: Dennis Quiad comes to close down an oil rig, which makes Miranda Otto mad. He and his co-pilot load up all the gear and workers on the plane, then hit a sandstorm and crash on the way to Bejing. Up until that point, I was invested. Then it all got silly. By way of a for instance: they never account for the evening temperature drop in a desert and the scenes where the crew is working at night also show the crew in light t-shirts and sweaty. Uh huh. Nomads wander by on the other side of the dune, Dennis Quaid says they're most likely bad news, but why not go make sure? Uh huh. Then, they finally get the plane rebuilt and everybody stands around on the ground while Dennis Quaid gets it started, then they all climb on. Uh huh. What was the point of that?

There was a moment or two where Giovanni Ribisi did cool stuff, but he was not enough to save the crappy writing. Alas.

Now, though, I'm curious to see the original. Since I can do the Instant Viewing thing a la Netflix, I may have to check it out this weekend and compare. Supposedly, the original is actually good.