The movie keeps the stereotypes coming with the religious character who blesses his aircraft at every mission, the guy with a girl back home, and the token black pilot/boxer who has to overcome racial bigotry. The only thing missing was the Bronx wise guy and the woman pilot trying to conquer male chauvinism.

With a genre completely untapped by the world of CGI, director Tom Bill had a chance to make a film about a thrilling piece of history that very few Americans know about.

Sadly, World War I pilot epic “Flyboys” crashes and burns at takeoff.

"Flyboys" tells the tale of the Lafayette Escadrille, the American squadron of volunteers who flew for the French well before America entered the war. A lot could be said about the film’s historical inaccuracies, but that would leave little space to point out all the blatant war cliches throughout the picture.

Each character has their own individual stereotype — from the misunderstood rich kid trying to impress his parents to the criminal on the run trying to hide from his past.

The lead character is Blaine Rawlings, played by James Franco, the rebellious cowboy looking to impress everybody. He is put into his place by mentor veteran Reed Cassidy played by Martin Henderson.

The movie keeps the stereotypes coming with the religious character who blesses his aircraft at every mission, the guy with a girl back home, and the token black pilot/boxer who has to overcome racial bigotry. The only thing missing was the Bronx wise guy and the woman pilot trying to conquer male chauvinism.

The prelude to combat was intense. Watching the men prepare to take off does give the audience the same sick feeling that what’s coming will mean the death of many of them. Veteran Cassidy gives the men pistols and tells them about the planes catching fire.

“You can ride it to the ground, jump from 1,000 feet, or take the easy way out,” he said. The thought of making that decision would sicken anyone.

The prelude doesn’t live up to the action. Whenever the Germans appear, the music playing is way too close to “Imperial March.”

They’re also vilified too much. They constantly give sinister expressions to the heroes and smile devilishly whenever they kill someone. They might as well of had handlebar mustaches and evil dogs that giggle in the back seat.

The dogfights also get unrealistic. The aces perform maneuvers that are just plain stupid, such as putting their landing gear into the wing of the enemy to knock them out of the sky.

The worst aspect is whenever a hero dies, every other character happens to look out of their plane in time to see it, and to make a distraught face even in the middle of combat.

Everything in this movie is too predictable. It’s really disappointing because it’s so easy to make a movie about without falling into the war movie cliché foxhole. The problem is that WWI was a lot less glorious than WWII. “Flyboys” was trying too hard to have a happy ending to a war that didn’t end happily.

When seeing this movie, you may want to take the advice of Reed Cassidy: You can either ride out the entire movie, ditch early and waste your nine bucks or bring a pistol and take the easy way out.

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