After being dumped by her boyfriend on her birthday, Donna decides to ditch her small Nevada town and become a flight attendant in California. She learns the ropes while working for a small commuter airline, but has bigger dreams.
I remember exactly one part of this movie – Mike Myers in the trailer telling Christina Applegate that she put the wrong emPHASIS on the wrong syllABLE. It’s probably the funniest part of the trailer – and the funniest part of View from the Top as a whole.
Gwyneth Paltrow is horribly miscast as the sugary sweet Donna Jensen. I’m not sure what it is about her, but her performance comes across as more like a naive child than anything else, and it’s a bit creepy.
She’s also not terribly gifted in comedy, so the movie is already off to a pretty rocky start. After the movie, I was convinced that View from the Top might have been more successful had Applegate played Donna and Paltrow played Christine, Donna’s co-worker and frenemy.
The rest of the cast is excellent, but wasted on a flimsy script. There’s just not enough going on to make it a worthwhile watch. The silly shenanigans aren’t silly-funny; they’re just… silly. Donna’s romance with Ted (Mark Ruffalo) is promising, but it takes a backseat to the silliness.
Maybe leaning into the romance more would have salvaged the movie and given it more of a purpose. There was just an unevenness to the whole thing, and I wonder if director Bruno Barreto even knew what kind of movie he wanted View from the Top to be.
I just wasn’t a fan. Mike Myers was probably the bright spot in this movie, though they went all in on the joke that his character was cross-eyed. It’s not as funny as I think they hoped it would be. View from the Top is a bunch of meh blandness, completely forgettable, and a waste of a highly talented cast.
Watched: 03/01/2023
Notable Song: Time After Time by Katie Cook