"A Story Takes Flight" is a little live action movie wwith documentary elements and this one premiered back in November 2019, so it is not even half a year old. The director is Emmy winner Reed Morano, while the three actresses you see featured here are Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, Golden Globe winner Kate Hudson and Teen Choice Award winner Zoe Saldana. All three of them are in their forties now and same is true about the director, who is female too by the way. Just saying because the first name sounds rather male to me. The entire thing here only runs for slightly over eight minutes and the three actresses (basically playing themselves) are united early on, then go explore Dubai on their own and eventually reunite at the end. I must say I felt a bit sorry for Kate Hudson. Not only do we see very little about her, even if they tried to hide it ith the long sequence towards the end, but she is also almost left behind by the other two. I mean she may be the one from the trio who is the least famous right now, maybe not even almost famous anymore (sorry I just had to), but that felt not right somehow to give her this treatment and basically she does nothing but interact with a musician and watch him play. That's all. You don't need to travel to Dubai for that. Anyway, maybe it's just me. So from what i wrote and the country I mentioned already it should have become clear by now that this short film is actually a travel advert for Dubai and of course they have infinite amounts of money there, so no surprise they got three prestigious Hollywood actresses and a successful rising filmmaker to be part of this project. Sadly I must say I was not too impressed and it did not get me really curious about travelling there. Apart from the fact that it doesn't hurt if you are as rich as the ladies you see in here. It's a very expensive country and also at the other end of the world for me. Not gonna say anything about the absence of the ladies' significant others, but I hope this is not their take on female power. Aside from that, I mean there must be more to Dubai that they could have shown than skating kids, musicians that you could find in every other corner of the world like this too or the nightclubs at the very end. The people all seem very nice though, that was alright, also the bikers. Okay, that is all I can and want to say here really. I don't call it a success. It feels fairly fake most of the time and clearly much more staged than it should have been, especially with how much they were going for authenticity. I mean I don't need all the action we get from a Clive Owen BMW commercial, but if this one here is the female-centered approach to what commercials look like, then I have to say: "Thanks, but no thanks." Very bland. Not recommended.
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