Review of Cloud Chasers

Supercell thunderstorms form the thin McGuffin that catapults this rather lightweight aviation adventure into flight, as airline pilot Niehaus is grounded after making an emergency landing to avoid a supposed supercell and sets out to vindicate herself by trying to enlist the help of two daredevil fly-boy brothers (Hutter and Witting). The inevitable flight into a supercell is only the climax, however, and the narrative crams in brotherly disputes, financial trouble, an obligatory romance, a strained father-daughter relationship and even a subplot about the brothers' mother resisting a greedy developer's attempts to buy off the family estate. The whole thing sets itself up as a kind of old-fashioned and violence-free adventure where the only real enemy is the blind force of nature. Unfortunately it achieves none of the required innocence or tension, instead floundering on the shallowness of the whole scenario and the contrived motivations needed to sustain it (including Hutter's laughably overblown antipathy to airline pilots).

The CGI flying and storm sequences are rendered reasonably well, but ultimately let down by the same directional flatness that permeates the whole enterprise, including Niehaus' performance. The film really comes across like a glossy car advert speckled with Heimat sentimentalism, with beautiful people flying aeroplanes and driving fancy cars in gorgeous Alpine landscapes. It forms an interesting counterpoint to that other German aviation drama of 2009, the much tenser but infinitely sillier Crashpoint.