View from the Top
Our Price: $15.66
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.97 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Candice Bergen, Christina Applegate, Gwyneth Paltrow, Joshua Malina, Mark RuffaloBrand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
Published: 2003-09-01
DVD Release Date: 2003-09-09
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Miramax Films
Movie Reviews of View from the Top
Movie Review: Fun, basic eye candy
Summary: 5 Stars
...although Gwyneth Paltrow's apartment in the upper eighties on Fifth avenue is hard to credit, unless the fictional airline bought a block of flats some time ago for senior employees, and funds the block as an investment.
As a business decision, unless the airline is doing very well on the equity, this doesn't make sense since Newark and JFK are rather hard to get to from Manhattan. But let us assume that Royalty needs the flexibility of calling its best flight attendants to fly domestic out of Newark or international out of JFK at will. Manhattan is midway.
But, the reality is La Hacienda near LAX, the official hotel of Spirit Airlines, a fun budget carrier, staffed by fun people, who only on occasion calls the LAPD to deal with its passengers when its one and only plane at LAX has a busted tire or something, and the passengers, delayed 12 hours, storm the counter. The passengers are also a fun lot, mostly gang bangers and working people who would otherwise take the bus. In general, a good time is had by all...but it is certainly nothing like ladies in hats deplaning in Paris.
[A fun way to go to Paris from the Far East: Emirates. My flight last year was also taken by an Osama clone who prayed overlong in the departure lounge and was greeted by muscular followers who played video games enroute. I sat next to an Austrian army type who was probably keeping an eye on the homes and nothing happened, probably because the Osama clone was just another schmoe cleric. Once you get over raw terror, flying is a gas, and, because of the raw terror, cheap psychiatry.]
But, movies about commercial aviation manage to show real working people who actually dream dreams limited ab initio by material circumstances.
This movie includes some nice eye candy including some real basic stuff...Stews in Bikinis at Lake Havasu. And throughout, Gwyneth Paltrow retains that dignity which does credit both to her own profession and those of people who keep planes up with the sharp end pointed the right way and watch over us passengers.
Rob Lowe as CoPilot Steve gets another one of those strange little cameos he gets from time to time, where his dangerous, almost saccharin, sexuality is allowed to ooze out a bit and then put back in the can. He goes nowhere, unfortunately, and his career (starting as it did with a serious version of David Mamet's stage play Sexual Perversity in Chicago) is also going nowhere...perhaps because About Last Night managed to preserve a modicum of moral seriousness and this upset the morally unserious who can't deal with terminal pain as a necessary part of sexuality.
Mike Moore is allowed instead to romp over most of the latter part of the film in a fun way and as your basic airhead stuff, this film is five stars.
Summary of View from the Top
Academy Award(R)-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, Best Actress, 1998; SHALLOW HAL) stars in this hilarious comedy hit about a small-town girl who's about to get a taste of the big-time world! No one thought Donna (Paltrow) would go very far. But when she sets her sights on becoming a first-class international flight attendant, Donna throws caution to the wind and takes off in pursuit of her dream! The ride is anything but smooth, however, and Donna's laugh-packed journey of a lifetime is rocked by more turbulence than she bargained for! Also starring Christina Applegate (TV's MARRIED WITH CHILDREN), Rob Lowe (AUSTIN POWERS Trilogy, TOMMY BOY), Kelly Preston (WHAT A GIRL WANTS, JERRY MAGUIRE), and Candice Bergen (SWEET HOME ALAMBAMA, MISS CONGENIALITY), this charmingly funny treat will send your spirits soaring!An ingeniously campy and enormously entertaining piece of fluff, View from the Top stars the impossibly lithe Gwyneth Paltrow as Donna, a white-trash girl with dreams of escaping her dead-end life by becoming an international flight attendant. Her destiny is complicated by a sweet guy (Mark Ruffalo) who just wants to live with his family in Cleveland and by a sister stewardess (Christina Applegate) who stabs Donna in the back. View from the Top doesn't take itself seriously, yet takes itself just seriously enough--Donna and the rest of the characters treat their absurdly candy-colored world as if it mattered. As Donna experiences the world and improves her fashion sense, the result is both hilarious and hilariously touching. Also featuring Mike Myers, Kelly Preston, and Candice Bergen as Donna's visionary mentor. --Bret Fetzer