| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 1, 2007

Flyboys doesn't just use cliches - it wallows in them, feeling more like a film based on old war movies than actual history.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

While director Bill nails the sheer spectacle of squads of SPADs dovetailing in flames into the wide blue yonder, the earthbound action (much as it was in another sputtering epic, Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor) is strictly laissez-faire.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 1, 2006

Aafter a while -- there must be six major fights against unending numbers of German planes -- it feels like special effects run amok.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 30, 2006

Why make such a corny and incredibly predictable film?

Full Review | Sep 25, 2006

The painstaking authenticity and appealing cast of Flyboys can't overcome the cloyingly formulaic nature of its story.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 22, 2006

This is old-school moviemaking, for better or worse, which means rat-a-tat dogfights in the sky combined with overripe romantic and social clichés on the ground.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 22, 2006

Besides some fine dogfight sequences, it often feels threadbare, just an exercise in recycling.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2006

Flyboys has computer imaging and a fleet of vintage aircraft on its side, but it remains considerably less convincing than Wings (1927), and less exciting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2006

The computer-generated flying effects are the only reason to see the movie, but at some point somebody left the computer on too long, so it went ahead and spat out the script.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 22, 2006

It's as if director Tony Bill simply fished out a mothballed script from 1947 and filmed it without updating it for contemporary audiences.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 22, 2006

This is spectacle in the grand old style, a bygone shot of adrenaline and grace.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2006

The creators of Flyboys know no image too clichéd, no narrative convention too exhausted and no psychological motivation too pat that it can't do service.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 22, 2006

Sometimes corn works. Sometimes it doesn't. Flyboys flops.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 22, 2006

A good documentary might have been a far more interesting film to make.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2006

If the current legroom in economy class doesn't make you resent the birth of the Wright Brothers, Flyboys certainly will. Like a flight from New York to Los Angeles, it's bad and it's long.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 22, 2006

When Flyboys finally ends, a too-long 139 minutes later, there's a sense of emptiness, perhaps even disgust.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 22, 2006

The aerial dogfights are thrilling, but the script seems to have been written by Snoopy.

| Sep 22, 2006

Those amazing young heroes from the second decade of the last century -- our first true fighter pilots -- deserve so much more than what's served up in this very disappointing attempt.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2006

The movie's straightforward and ingratiating, and as pretty-boy history lessons go, it's a lot less obnoxious than Pearl Harbor.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 22, 2006