42
This is a lost opportunity on an epic scale. The actors are so styled and the dogfights so drippy with CG that, as a period piece, the movie almost looks like it's set in the future.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
38
Flyboys doesn't succeed as a wartime adventure story or as a period romance. Even the special effects, set in a historical context, are too ho-hum to save this over-long and tedious film.
50
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
Just about everything in the video-gamey World War I picture Flyboys rings false, although the planes certainly are terrific.
50
The New York Times by Nathan Lee
Despite its empty head and arduous length, Flyboys is ever so nice, in the manner of a Norman Rockwell illustration. The director, Tony Bill, may not be a philosopher but he is a gentleman, moving things along with a tidy, well-mannered hand. In another context, such politesse might feel tonic. Given the state of things, it’s nearly toxic.
70
A highly enjoyable programmer about those brave young men and their rickety flying machines.
60
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
A decidedly old-fashioned war film that reaches for epic sweep but is often bogged down in cliched drama and two-dimensional characters.
50
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
While the music slops and churns and the ground-level bathos rises, the aerial stuff is occasionally stirring.
60
Lovingly and knowledgeably made by director Tony Bill, who got his pilot's license as a teenager, pic nonetheless has a lightweight, airbrushed feel; despite the brutal dogfights and inevitable deaths, there's little gravity or resonance.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
As imaginatively as some of them are staged, the action scenes are never authentically gripping. This seems to be the hidden handicap of our new digital filmmaking era in which all big action sequences are generated in the computer and look vaguely like cartoons.