Watching Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow is like living inside the coolest 1930s sci-fi action/adventure comic book never made. Sky Captain is a purely visual film, with so much eye candy and so many "gee-whiz, that was cool!" moments that the performances and plot are secondary. And that's good, because if you're looking for complex characters and an original story that says something important, you won't find it in Sky Captain. What you will find is an uber-cool homage to the science fiction and adventure pulp magazines of the '30s and '40s.

It's 1939 in a stylized, alternate universe. Top scientists from around the globe are disappearing, kidnapped by the mysterious Dr. Totenkopf. Reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is on the case when giant robots suddenly attack New York and steal some generators. Coming to the city's rescue is Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Jude Law), an ace fighter pilot and Polly's old flame. When Sky Captain's island base is attacked and the robots kidnap his trusty sidekick Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), our hero and Polly venture to Nepal to find Totenkopf. Along the way, Commander Franky Cook (the eye-patch-wearing Angelina Jolie) shows up to help, and soon our heroes discover that Totenkopf's plans include nothing short of the destruction of the planet.

The plot is far-out comic book stuff and is really just an excuse for an array of pretty stunning action sequences. Sky Captain was shot entirely on blue-screen, so the only things that are "real" in the movie are the actors. And while that technique didn't work for George Lucas in the Star Wars prequels, it succeeds here because it's the visuals, not the characters, driving the movie. And in Sky Captain, there's no shortage of neat things to see. There are dogfights among the skyscrapers of New York and ray gun battles with towering, tentacle-armed robots, not to mention dinosaurs, android assassins, planes that turn into submarines, and jet packs. The film has a cool, retro Art Deco look to it, reminiscent of the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 1940s (writer-director Kerry Conran actually based the giant robots in Sky Captain on robots in one of the Superman cartoons). The colors of the movie are done in a muted, sepia-toned kind of way, giving it even more of a nostalgic feeling.

Some will argue that all the visual effects and high concept stuff can't save the film from a predictable story and less than compelling characters. That's crazy talk, and it's missing the point of the movie. Sky Captain is thrilling popcorn entertainment that delivers the goods.