During this week’s promotional screening of Flyboys in Toronto, there was a lot more giggling and catcalling than one would expect for a historical war-time drama. Granted, much of the audience was made up of teenage boys more interested in their friends than the movie, but that kind of a response was not undeserved. Flyboys, to put it bluntly, turned out to be a bit of a joke.

“Inspired by a true story,” Flyboys goes back to World War I to tell the tale of the young American volunteers who fought for the Allied resistance as part of the legendary French air squadron Lafayette Escadrille. It’s a noble thing to do – to preserve the memory of the young men who risked their lives on celluloid – but the film is unable to do history justice.

James Franco (Spiderman, Tristan & Isolde) stars as cocky Texan farm boy Blaine Rawlings, who seeks something new and exciting after the death of his parents and the bank’s foreclosure of his family ranch. Flyboys follows him closely, watching as he learns from veteran air fighter Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson), who at first appears to be a hostile mentor but is actually just employing his own form of tough love. Cue war movie cliché number one. As the story unfolds with Rawlings rising to the occasion and becoming the squadron’s top-notch ace under Cassidy, Rawlings also develops an obviously contrived romance with Lucienne (Jennifer Decker), the French girl who nurses his wounds after a crash during training. There goes war movie cliché number two. Despite an impossible language barrier, the two fall in love and Rawlings spends much of the movie risking everything to save her. Hard to believe, especially due to the fact that when we first meet Lucienne, she can’t tell “hello” from “goodbye,” and by the end of the movie, she’s speaking perfect English. Perhaps a little too convenient.

That’s not to say Golden Globe winner Franco, Decker, and Henderson don’t do the best they can though. Flyboys is well-casted but director Tony Bill doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with his actors. Many scenes feel forced, if not pointless altogether. While the action scenes, central to portraying the aerial dogfights that were key in WWI battles, were executed well, more historical context would have helped to explain the significance of the Lafayette Escadrille. Otherwise, the audience is left wondering why they’re even watching.






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