It's hard to imagine what attracted Gwyneth Paltrow to "View from the Top," a sputtering, underfueled slapstick romance in which she stars as an aspiring international flight attendant.
If all she wanted to do was show up and get paid, she probably could have found a bigger-budget movie where phoning it in would have been acceptable.
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The few laughs in this movie are thanks to Myers, but you can feel him straining to make something of a character that's more bizarre than funny. As with Paltrow, you wonder: Why is he in this movie? For whom is he doing a favor?
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First-time writer Eric Wald provides neither a shrewd structure nor a single line of memorable dialogue. "View from the Top" wheezes to a finish in which all of Donna's decisions are affirmed beyond reason.
As for Paltrow's decisions, she's allowed to make a bad one like signing to do this movie — so long as it doesn't become a habit.
From FilmCritic.com:
Assume crash positions, people. We're going down.
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Bashing View, though, is like kicking a puppy for licking your hand too often. The sweet but schizophrenic effort begs to be loved, and takes itself so seriously that you'll question its sincerity. It reaches high levels of camp, packing a vicious cat fight, a Rob Lowe cameo, and a lazy-eyed flight attendant instructor played without wit by Mike Myers. But Barreto is uncomfortable with such juvenile material, so he retreats to the safe trappings of the romantic comedy formula whenever View flirts with legitimate spoof.
Regardless of the intended genre, the horrible dialogue in Roger Kumble and Eric Wald's script makes the air up here awful thin, suffocating all attempts at humor.
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Casting Paltrow is the biggest mystery. Clad head to toe in pretty-girl pink retro costumes stitched from cheap spandex, the rail-thin A-lister parades in skintight flight suits and skimpy bikinis. Can't she play dress up in the comfort of her own mansion? She does lend an ounce of credibility to the underdeveloped romantic angle, but the naturally trashy Applegate makes a better fit for the down-and-out Donna role.
Without Paltrow's presence, though, View would have been issued a one-way, coach class ticket to the nearest cable network. So now we know why Barreto cast Paltrow as Donna. We're still hazy on why she accepted the part.
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