A superb movie with a wretched title

The title of the movie is as wretched as the film "Flyboys" is excellent – and well worth seeing.

It is the wartime stories of a number of members of the Lafayette Escadrille – those World War I volunteers who went to France before the U.S. entered the war in order to fight Imperial Germany, whose many-victoried fighter pilots included Baron von Richtofen, as well as Hermann Goering.

TRENDING: Reigning Mrs. World arrested after taking tiara from winner in ugly meltdown

It is a magnificent movie, first in the absolutely spectacular and fast-as-lightning aerial combat; then in a beautiful love story with a sad ending; and finally in a character study of men from an officially neutral country, risking and rapidly losing their lives in defense of two foreign nations that eventually became our allies.

I so wish that this memorable movie could have another title, because "Flyboys" is an inexcusably flippant insult to young men who so courageously risked and often lost their lives.

Possibly this was selected because a movie entitled "Lafayette Escadrille" was filmed years ago starring Tab Hunter – and with an early scene roll call including "Charlie Kinsolving" – who was my uncle.

He was a bomber squadron leader who retuned from raids with as many as 70 bullet holes in his fuselage.

It is not only because of him that I was so utterly appalled by the Washington Post review by Stephen Hunter, headlined "Flyboys: A lot of hot air." This review opens as follows:

"Off we go into the wild blue meander with 'Flyboys,' an inflated wannabe epic about the American aviators of Lafayette Escadrille in the First World War.

"The movie is one of those weird retro numbers, in which millions are spent on technology so that the final product looks as though it were made in 1930. It's so overdone it becomes almost goofy, particularly when a stricken Lafayette fighter piloted by the inevitable doomed nobleman slides backward into the big hydrogen-puffed air-wagon, creating a fireball not seen since Krakatoa."

I am compelled to wonder if critic Hunter was both unborn as well as prematurely unaware of the enormously explosive fireball death of the German Zeppelin Hindenburg, which was in 1937 – 49 years after Krakatoa.

Hunter also writes: "It examines the history of the volunteer group attached to the French flying force before we went Over There."

Why is "over there" rendered by this writer as the song rather than where they went and where thousands of them are buried?

Should one of the most moving of all our nation's war songs be so made fun of?

Since I am not a regular film critic, I do not know if there is any record listing those movies that were box office smash hits despite miserable reviews.

I do know that the Washington Post does provide a move guide: When critic Stephen Hunter pans it – be sure to see it.

When he writes a rave, use your good judgment and avoid it like the plague.

Related special offer:

"MOVIEGUIDE?"