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Are moviegoers tired of noisy, bombastic, overblown action movies? Especially those that rip off lots of other films while pretending to have something to say about the direction our technology is taking us? Could be.

Last week, the bioethics thriller The Island became the first of the half-dozen films directed by Michael Bay (Armageddon, Bad Boys) to flop at the box office. And this week, Stealth—a movie directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, XXX), about a military plane that gets hit by lightning, starts thinking for itself, and becomes a bigger threat than the terrorists it's supposed to be killing—crashed and burned at theatres, too.

Critics seem to agree that the film—which shamelessly cribs elements of War Games, Colossus: The Forbin Project, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Short Circuit, with an unexpected side trip into Behind Enemy Lines territory—is more artificial than intelligent.

Russ Breimeier (Christianity Today Movies) writes, "The greatest flaw with Stealth—and there are many—is that it doesn't stay true to its premise … Bad acting and dialogue also keep these characters from becoming engaging or believable … Suffice to say, this is yet another perfect example of a bad Hollywood blockbuster, incapable of offering a sensible script or a well-staged action sequence. Neither entertaining nor exciting, the dumb and noisy Stealth will hopefully live up to its name by fading quietly from movie theaters."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says the film is so busy it's boring: "Part of Einstein's theory of relativity states that the faster an object moves the more time slows down. Want proof? Go see Stealth (Columbia), a high-speed but vacuous exercise in adrenalin overdrive that packs a lot of G-force, as in 'Gee, when is this film going to be over?'" He adds that the movie "makes you pine for the emotional subtlety and character depth of a Jerry Bruckheimer film … Like EDI's cockpit, Stealth is empty."

Jeffrey Huston (Crosswalk) says the film fails even on its own superficial terms: "Visually it's horrible; the ships are poorly designed, the flight action is obviously fake … and only one shot (a mid-air ring of fire) makes you think 'wow.' Director Rob Cohen was so busy trying to make his aerial sequences look impressive that he forgot to make them feel authentic … The film's only boast is that it's loud, thus making it stealth in name only. But hey—at least when the robot jet goes renegade it cranks hard-driving rock tunes as it unleashes its heartless destruction. Sure it may be evil, but man, its iPod playlists are the coolest!"

Mainstream critics seem divided into two camps: those who think it's so bad it's good, and those who think it's so bad it's bad.

What if the X-Men went to a school that was kind of like Hogwarts, only American instead of British? And what if the school was stationed up in the air, kind of like that hangar where Angelina Jolie was stationed in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? You might get something like Sky High, a fun Disney flick about a high school for superheroes that seems to have left most Christian critics reasonably happy.

My own review is at Christianity Today Movies.

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) writes, "Director Mike Mitchell strikes the perfect blend of campy humor, visual finesse and honest emotion. The movie has a goofy comic-book charm that doesn't take itself too seriously. Yet though lighthearted in tone the film explores coming-of-age themes of self-esteem, peer pressure and parental expectations, and is suitable for all but the youngest viewers. Like The Incredibles, at its heart Sky High is about family and those everyday superpowers we all possess: love and friendship."

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August (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49