Although I grew up during the 1970s and ’80s, it sometimes seems as if I spent more time in the ’30s and ’40s. No, I didn’t have a time machine in my closet, nor am I the sort that claims to have recovered memories of past life experiences (although I do have an unusually healthy sense of deja vu sometimes…) What I mean is that during my childhood, through some quirk of timing and the cyclical nature of popular culture, I was often immersed in stories and forms of media that had first entertained my grandparents.

For example, my local library had an extensive collection of Old-Tyme Radio Shows on cassette as well as 70s-vintage reprints of the Doc Savage novels and the stories of Robert E. Howard, E.E. “Doc” Smith, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I devoured these items with glee, only dimly aware that they were, shall we say, not of more recent vintage. I knew they’d been created before I was born, but I didn’t realize how long before my birth (half a century in most cases).

Meanwhile, on TV, I was watching Charlie Chan movies and old cliffhanger serials (my favorite was the king of serials, Flash Gordon, although I also remember Gene Autry’s bizarre Phantom Empire with fondness). In a strange way, all of this was familiar, because the new product coming out at that time, the stuff that created such a stir for people growing up in that era — Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, in other words — was steeped in the sensibilities of 1930s entertainment. Star Wars and Raiders shared the same giddy tone of adventure and enthusiasm, the child-like sense that, no matter how nifty the thing we just saw was, there was something even better right around the next corner.

That same gee-whiz sensibility is present in megadoses in the new film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The plot is straight out of one of those vintage cliffhangers, not so much a story as a loose assemblage of set-ups for the next amazing spectacle. Basically, the world is being attacked by giant robots that are stealing various scientific and technological resources for reasons unknown, and a plucky woman reporter has teamed with the dashing aviator/adventurer known as Sky Captain to solve the mystery. And that’s about all there is to this movie, really. The film isn’t so much concerned with story as it is with story elements: zeppelins, airplanes, giant robots, death rays, teams of elite crimefighters, secret bases, mad scientists, sunken cities, boy geniuses, a giant rocket ship, and (say it in a big voice) The Fate of the Entire World. In short, Sky Captain is every pulp novel I ever read, every black-and-white Saturday cliffhanger I ever saw, all condensed into one convenient package. It’s goofy, it’s bizarre, it doesn’t make a lick of sense… and I loved every single frame of it.

A large part of the film’s appeal is its look. It’s set in 1939, but it’s not the historical ’39, not the actual dark time when the world was still pulling itself out of the Depression while Nazis rampaged across Europe and people wondered if there was going to be a 1940. No, this is the 1939 of our imaginations, an alternate reality pieced together from old movies, black-and-white photographs, and tattered back issues of Amazing Stories. Like the cover of one of those old pulp magazines, Sky Captain features the charmingly unrealistic imagery envisioned by writers and artists during a time when science was, to borrow a line from Star Trek, hardly beyond the level of stone knives and bearskins.

Realizing the difficulty of creating a past that never was on a soundstage, the film’s director, a young first-timer named Kerry Conran, chose instead to realize the complex visuals he needed inside a computer. The only real objects in the film are the actors and the handful of physical props they actually touch. Everything else was created digitally. Think of it as the inverse of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In that film, animated characters interacted with the real world; in Sky Captain, real actors inhabit an animated world.

Now, to be honest, I’m not a big fan of computer-generated imagery, or CGI. In most instances, I don’t think it looks as real as more traditional visual effects. But Sky Captain is different. It’s not trying to look real. It’s trying to look like one of those old pulp magazines, right down to the faded colors of a yellowing page, and it succeeds beautifully in this goal. It is as if you were looking at a copy of Amazing and the illustrations suddenly started to move. (If you’re not familiar with pulps, think of this movie as a comic book. Not a movie based on a comic book, but an actual comic book come to life.) Since everything in the movie is CG, nothing looks out-of-context or phony, or at least no phonier than anything else, and I soon forgot I was watching something that was made on a desktop instead of inside a studio.

The lead actors, Gwyneth Paltrow as Polly the reporter and Jude Law as Joe the Sky Captain, have the smooth, elegant looks of 1930s movie stars, and Giovanni Ribisi and Angelina Jolie are perfect for their small but memorable roles. Unlike a lot of recent science-fiction/adventure films, Sky Captain has a strong sense of humor, which helps the audience suspend its disbelief and just follow along for the ride. (In this regard, SC shares much with its predecessor Raiders of the Lost Ark, although Raiders was ultimately a far more serious film than this one). An example of Sky Captain‘s humor is a running gag about Polly not wanting to waste the last two frames of film in her camera, so she keeps passing up astonishing opportunities in hopes of seeing something better. The final payoff to this gag is, in fact, the movie’s last scene, ending the film on a good-natured note just like they did in the old days.

Really, the only weak link in this mosaic of borrowed motifs is the Sky Captain himself. Jude Law, although he looks great in his costume, occasionally seems unsure of how to play the part or how seriously he should be taking the proceedings. Nothing against Mr. Law, whom I’ve quite liked in other films, but a better choice for this role might have been Ewan McGregor, who knows how to play a deadly serious scene with a twinkle in his eye (his performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi is about the only aspect of the Star Wars prequels about which I have no reservations). Jude Law isn’t actually bad as Sky Captain, I just don’t think he was very comfortable in the part. Still, this is a minor flaw in an otherwise very enjoyable, if off-beat, movie experience.

It occurs to me that I may have been uniquely prepared to enjoy Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow because of my love of old things, so I’m not entirely sure of how others are going to react to it. Nevertheless, I’m going to give the film one of my highest recommendations. I’m pretty late posting this review, but I believe it is still playing in theaters, so if you have the chance, don’t pass up the opportunity to see it on the big screen, where the spectacle can be fully appreciated.