BEFORE: I went and played Oscar trivia last night, not with my whole regular team - just me and one other movie/TV guy, and together we came in third. Not bad, considering how many people showed up.
Linking from "The Horse Whisperer", Sam Neill was also in "The Piano" with Holly Hunter - worth pointing out on Oscar weekend.
THE PLOT: A romantic adventure about a legendary pilot's passion for dare-devil firefighting and his girl.
AFTER: I'm really split on this one, I see what they were trying to do to create a romance that sort of transcends time and death, but I don't really agree with the way they went about it. The movie "Ghost" came out around the same time, and sort of did a lot more with a lot less. To buy into this one, you've got to take a couple of things about life after death for granted, and I'm not really mentally into doing that.
I believe that humans have a higher form of consciousness than, say, insects or chickens, but I don't think that affords us some type of everlasting paradise. I believe in our ability to conceptualize heaven, but that in itself does not mean that it does in fact exist. I've never seen any indication that it does, though I was raised to believe in the typical Christian afterlife, so I'm still a bit in conflict, leaning toward rejecting the entire concept. If there is no heaven, wouldn't that make life more precious, more fragile? But people seem to think that would also make life meaningless, if you work and struggle and enact change in the world, and your reward is then non-existence.
But times change, and technology changes, and as a result our stories change, too. Look at the Christmas specials nowadays that depict Santa Claus using smartphones and web-cams to keep track of who's naughty and who's nice. But where's the update on the afterlife? You never see God depicted using a computer or looking at a bank of video monitors - it's all still some form of "magic" that doesn't need to be explained. The Supreme Being, if he exists, is omniscient, all-powerful, and can't be depicted in petty human terms.
But then we get films intent on subverting the Judeo-Christian version of heaven, as seen in "Heaven Can Wait" and "What Dreams May Come". Angels wear white business suits, or heaven looks like a field full of flowers that stretches out to an infinite horizon. Because that's so much better than seeing people walk on clouds wearing white robes, sandals and halos, having each been issued a standard harp and set of wings upon arrival. Come on, if part of this is ridiculous, isn't it by extension ALL ridiculous?
It takes a certain amount of arrogance to be an author or screenwriter, to say THIS is how the universe works. THESE are the five people you meet in heaven. It's just as arrogant as religious figures saying you need to go to confession, you need to say THIS many prayers to get into heaven. You don't know that. Nobody knows that, or has the right to define what God's rules are, or if there are any rules at all. The arrogance of the people who wrote or (mis-)translated the Bible, to attempt to convince everyone how the system works, as they see it. I'm calling B.S. on the whole deal.
Just for fun, talk to your local religious or spiritual leader - ask him or her what happens if you lose your leg during the course of your life. Do you get it back when you arrive in heaven? What about your appendix or your tonsils? And what about your favorite pet - will he be waiting for you when you arrive, or is heaven for humans only? With all these complications, isn't the simplest answer usually the best - namely that none of what people "know" about heaven is really true?
According to this film, no matter what you do, even if you save a ton of lives fighting fires, risking your life and making the ultimate sacrifice, even then you don't get to go on to your eternal rest. Instead you have to stick around and train someone else to do your job, looking over his shoulder to give advice that he can't quite hear, but somehow listens to anyway. This can also be quite painful if said trainee follows your life too closely and you have to watch him dating your girlfriend, or give him advice on how to seal the deal.
What's the takeaway here - make sure your affairs are in order before you die, or you'll have to tie up all your loose ends as a ghost? Is this some attempt to reconcile the concepts of ghosts with the concept of heaven, to demonstrate somehow how those two possibly non-existent things are not in conflict with each other?
As with "The Horse Whisperer", I would have liked to learn more about the mechanics of the featured task, fighting fires with airplanes. There wasn't much technical info outside of people saying "Pull up!" a lot. Pulling up is apparently very important when your plane gets in trouble - which sounds like really basic stuff. Why is it so important for planes to fly so low to dump water and/or red goop on forest fires? Why don't these pilots keep better track of how much fuel they've got left? Why cut everything so close all the time? Explanations, please.
There are also a lot of in-jokes between the characters, which we the audience may not really understand. Those end up being hokey, and generally a good editor should advise getting rid of those. An actor's bad John Wayne impression might have killed on the set, but it just doesn't play as funny on film, it's just kind of odd. Similarly, I know it's hard to come up with original names for characters, but Dorinda? That's too far outside of the box, I've never heard the name before.
NITPICK POINT: Some characters also act in odd, unexplainable ways. Why stand on a runway where you know a plane is ultimately going to land, and then all of a sudden, when the plane gets close, realize that you're standing in a dangerous spot? Wouldn't people who are experts on airplane things know not to stand there in the first place?
NITPICK POINT #2: Dorinda offers to dance with all of the male pilots and personnel present in the bar. Which seems a little odd, since she supposedly has feelings for just one of them. She demands that they all wash their hands before they can dance with her, to keep her dress clean. But aren't their shirts dirty, too? They're pretty much all covered head to toe in either oil, gas or smoke.
I just wonder if Steven Spielberg ever looks back on some of his earlier films, like this one, and thinks, "God, that was hokey. And why did I make those characters act in such weird ways?"
Also starring Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Down and Out in Beverly Hills"), John Goodman (last heard in "Happy Feet Two"), Brad Johnson, Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "Robin and Marian"), Marg Helgenberger, Keith David (last seen in "The Quick and the Dead").
RATING: 4 out of 10 helium balloons (NOTE: After the end credits, there was a warning about the danger of using helium balloons to raise the tone of one's voice, as a few characters do in the film. I found it strange that in a film depicting pilots taking enormous risks to extinguish forest fires, that's the thing that they have to warn people about.)
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