Retro Review: The Rocketeer
Disney’s The Rocketeer: When watching a three-star movie is a four-star event…
You saw it, didn’t you?
The scene in Season 1 of The Mandalorian:
If you are of a certain age, I am certain you said to yourself, “Self, where have I seen that scene before?”
Well, The Rocketeer, of course!
Not a perfect movie…
I will admit — even I can admit — that The Rocketeer is not a perfect movie. Even the boilerplate reads like the pulp adventures and cliffhangers the film is based on.
The discovery of a top-secret jetpack hurls test pilot Cliff Secord into a daring adventure of mystery, suspense and intrigue. Cliff encounters an assortment of ruthless villains, led by a Hollywood screen star who’s a secret spy. With the help of his actress girlfriend, the young pilot battles enormous odds to defeat his foes, who are anxious to use the device in an evil plan to rule the world.
And I agree with Roger Ebert’s 3/4 stars review:
The Rocketeer (1991). Image: Disney.
That doesn’t mean “The Rocketeer” is not entertaining. But adjustments are necessary to enjoy it; you have to dial down, to return to an age of innocence when an eccentric inventor and a clear-eyed hero could take on the bad guys with a new gizmo they’d dreamed up overnight… The movie’s innocence extends even to its special effects, which may be state-of-the-art but sometimes seem as charmingly direct as those rockets in the “Flash Gordon” serials – the ones with sparklers hidden inside of them, which were pulled on wires in front of papier-mache mountains. When “The Rocketeer” straps on his gizmo and goes whizzing around the screen, he looks for all the world like some harebrained kid trying to break his neck on some new contraption.
But therein lay my love for The Rocketeer.
When I watch it, I am that ” harebrained kid trying to break his neck on some new contraption.”
…but it creates a perfect feeling.
Yep. Remember that kid running around in the backyard with a handmade helmet and a blanket and dad’s oversized gloves.
It’s hard, but they’re still there in the back of your mind.
And, never mind the nostalgia of the film itself (and the movie fits tightly into a pantheon of period films I would watch for the soundtrack alone), enjoying The Rocketeer might be as close to an afternoon with my late grandparents as I will ever get again.
In my eyes, my World War II-vet grandpa Eddie was every bit the hero represented by Cliff Secord. My grandma Mary was “Rosie the Riveter” in real life. They were the “good guys.” And the bad guys of their generation remain easy to hate.
But being with them really wasn’t about “The Good War” or The Greatest Generation surviving The Great Depression and all that. Unlike school or friends or parents, when you stepped into their house, there were no expectations. They enjoyed life. They enjoyed the moment. And they wanted you to do the same.
Do you remember that? The unconditional choice to simply be a kid; to unabashedly dream? To run in the park (no homework, no chores) and, when you got home, an ice cream sandwich after homemade meatloaf in the kitchen.
I try like hell to catch just a few minutes of that feeling every now and then. Thanks to my own boys, I can live vicariously (if I remember to let them be kids – hard to manage sometimes on lock down).
Sometimes, I think it’s important to let storytellers do the same thing; let the audience lose a few years over the two hours watching the movie. Let them be kids. And, even beyond Jon Favreau’s homage on The Mandalorian, I don’t think I’m alone in that convention.
Another example: Brad Bird’s initial jet pack scene in Tomorrowland seems to be a direct homage to The Rocketeer.
Remember, young Frank has a little trouble with the controls:
And just like Cliffy, he makes like a “big gopher.”
Again, there’s nothing very clever here; it’s just childhood dreams filled out by special effects.
Neither Tomorrowland nor The Rocketeer are considered masterpieces. But they work for me, just like a Johnny Rockets hamburger, large fry, and a milkshake still do.
Photo: Johnny Rockets
Heck, I may not be able to get back to a Big Boys for real, but I’ll take the facsimile.
And, frankly, in this world, anything that can transform you into a 10-year-old — even for a few minutes — is a four-star event.
