‘View’ soars above typical comedy status

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It takes a strong man to admit he somewhat enjoyed a movie that revolves around the flight attendant business.

Maybe it was Gwenyth Paltrow in a rubber suit, or Christina Applegate in a blue bikini, but “View from the Top” is a movie with lots of charm, even though it comes off a bit annoying.

Paltrow plays Donna, a small-town girl who dreams of living in an uptown world. She grew up in a trailer in a small Nevada town, with a mother who went through four husbands and told her she would never amount to anything.

After having her heart broken by her boyfriend, Donna gets some much-needed advice from a savior.

No, she doesn’t find Jesus in her turmoil, but follows the advice from an inspirational flight attendant (Candice “Don’t Call Me Murphy Brown” Bergen).

A View from the Top

She joins the ranks of flight attendants, and with her trainee at her side (Applegate), they join another flight attendant (Kelly Preston) on trip to apply for Royal Airlines, the epitome of air travel.

Once in flight attendant school, these two must outwit John (Mike Myers), an instructor who has dreams of his own to one day fly the friendly skies, but because he has a lazy eye, his flight will never take off.

After apparently acing the flight attendant test, Paltrow is set to fly high and across the ocean, but she gets shafted into commuter flights that never leave the states.

Once she’s stationed in Cleveland, she hooks up with a nice guy (Mark Ruffalo) and can’t let herself fall in love with him because she is dreaming bigger than Ohio.

But, she eventually comes to the realization that her international flight schedules are leaving her empty inside, and after a lonely Christmas Eve in Paris, Donna hops a flight for Cleveland to confess her need to be a small-town girl.

“View from the Top” may be an annoying exercise in bringing down a great actress to the common-folk level, but Paltrow is an actress who can make the best of what she’s given.

With a formulaic comedy script (a la “Sweet Home Alabama”), “View from the Top” suffers from ultimately not knowing where it wants to go or what kind of comedy it wants to be.

Directed by Bruno Barreto, “View from the Top” wants to be sentimental; it wants to be a romantic comedy; it wants to be a slapstick comedy; but it ultimately becomes confused as to which story line it should stick to.

No matter though, with Paltrow flashing her smile and elevating the foggy script, “View from the Top” could have taken a noise dive, but it winds up being a gentle flight.