SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon, Ling Bai

GENRE: Action/sci-fi/romance/drama

CERTIFICATE: PG

GUIDE: No swearing, no sex, violence

RATING PPPP

IT'S CHOCKS away in Kerry Conran's ground-breaking pulp fiction fantasy, which has been more than six years in the making.

Using virtually no sets and no locations, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is brought vividly to life with more than 2,000 computer-generated effects shots.

The actors filmed their sequences against a blue screen and the backgrounds were added later, conjuring a breathtaking 1930s science-fiction world of gargantuan rampaging robots, lost dinosaurs and mad scientists.

You have never seen anything like this film, which references everything from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, King Kong and The Lost World to The Rocketeer and Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

As the giant Hinderburg III airship docks atop the Empire State Building, tenacious reporter Polly Perkins (Paltrow) is on the scent of a sensational front page article. A number of famous scientists have disappeared and the spirited journalist from the New York Chronicle believes that brilliant yet reclusive German scientist Dr Totenkopf may be to blame.

Huge mechanical monsters and flying robots descend on the Big Apple, leaving destruction in their wake.

Mercenary aviator, 'Sky Captain' Joe Sullivan (Law), flies to the rescue, but not before the metal invaders have robbed the city of its vital power sources.

Joining forces with Polly, who is also his old flame, and technical genius Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), Joe embarks on a daredevil mission that will take him from the Himalayan Alps to the tranquil valley of Shangri-la.

Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is an eye-popping feast for the senses.

The digital trickery is stunning, creating a world of ice caves, underwater flights and a mobile airstrip thousands of feet in the air, captained by squadron leader Franky Cook (Jolie).

Clever lighting and a smattering of cliches in the screenplay carefully add to the illusion of an old-fashioned adventure yarn.

There's not a great deal of substance to the plot, but some of the characterisation is pleasing, particularly the fractious banter between Joe and Polly.

Law and Paltrow seem content to go on to acting auto-pilot but Jolie is an absolute hoot, trotting out a plummy English accent that suggests her ace pilot was born with an entire set of silver spoons in her mouth.