Kerry Conran's “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” is a big, roaring exercise in cinematic scrapbooking.

Plastered with hammy, ’30s-style patter and sundry allusions to popcorn flicks past, Conran's film exuberantly announces itself as the work of a talented and exacting movie-nerd hobbyist. It's obsessive, meticulous and — all things considered — quite a blast.

Filmed with unprecedented use of blue screens, “Sky Captain” is essentially one computer-generated special effect with people-sized holes cut out for the stars, including Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie.

Predictably, the performances suffer, but the technique does afford first-time director Conran — a one-time creative recluse plucked from obscurity by producer Jon Avnet (“Risky Business”) — the freedom to conjure some wonderful images. Conran's New York City is the stuff of Fritz Lang and Jules Verne, with massive silver zeppelins mating with skyscrapers against a coppery, saturated sky. The movie's retro sci-fi sensibilities kick into full gear when Gotham (the timeline is set sometime before World War II) is attacked by a swarm of giant robots intent on stealing the city's energy supply. Swooping out of the clouds in his prop-driven fighter plane, hero-mercenary Joe “Sky Captain” Sullivan (Law) drives the metal beasts away, leaving only the mystery of their intentions and origins.

To solve the puzzle, he reluctantly teams up with ex-girlfriend Polly Perkins (Paltrow), an ace newspaper reporter who has a lead involving several missing scientists and a now-defunct German military program known only as “Unit 11.”

Following the lead, Joe and Polly embark on a classic matinee-serial adventure that takes them from the rarified climes of Shangri-La to a fleet of levitating aircraft carriers commanded by one-eyed dominatrix air marshal Franky Cook (Jolie).

All the while, Law and “Talented Mr. Ripley” co-star Paltrow engage in a brand of playful, saucy bickering that once was pro forma in Hollywood's Golden Era. Giovanni Ribisi (“Lost in Translation”) is likable as Joe's wrench-wielding techie sidekick — another stock character from a bygone era.

Conran scatters his virtual movie set with clues to his influences, some subtle (the ship at the bottom of the ocean, an exact replica of the boat in the 1933 version of “King Kong”), others irritatingly obvious.

Before leaving the newspaper offices to meet a secret source, Polly tells her fretful editor (Michael Gambon), “Don't worry, you know what a careful girl I am” — a paraphrasing of Harrison Ford's famous line in “Raiders of the Ark” (1981).

Conran has also cribbed bits of “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), “Star Wars” (1977), “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996) and “Metropolis” (1926). Those all seem pretty logical, given the way the movie plays out like a golly-gee “Flash Gordon” cliffhanger.

Some of Conran's other allusions are a bit arcane. In one scene, a character asks "Is it safe?" before a projected image of the movie's Oz-like villain, Totenkoph, flickers to life.

And who is playing Totenkoph but a young Laurence Olivier, patched together from black-and-white archive footage. So, there's your “Marathon Man” (1976). Sharper-eared devotees might be able to detect some “Boys From Brazil” lines in there, too.

Which isn't to say that writer/director Conran doesn't have his own bright ideas. The title — lifted from an attraction at the 1939 New York World Fair — seems fitting, given the filmmaker's affinity for vintage futurism.
Ultimately, Conran leads us to a satisfying finale set on a hidden island where his patchwork of influences come together in a pulse-thumping melange of ark-like spaceships, robot assassins and Miltonesque doomcraft. To its credit, “Sky Captain” actually ends better than it starts.

Where the film sputters is in the performances. Law, Paltrow and company wear the unfocused, slightly off-key expressions of actors forced to imagine their surroundings, yielding drama that feels muted and floating.

As a work of artistic artifice, “Sky Captain” is quite an accomplishment — even the carpet at Radio City Music Hall is a digital farce. But as with any blue screen, there's a price to pay.