Review: ‘Amelia’ Fails to Take Flight
by Carl KozlowskiThere are certain mysteries that place a stronghold on the world’s imagination. The existence (or lack thereof) of the Bermuda Triangle, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and UFOs are primary among these questions, inducing shivers in those who would like to speculate about the possibility of strange life forms on our fair planet.
And then there is a different sort of mystery, one in which we know someone really existed and then suddenly, simply disappeared without a trace. The famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart was one of those people, the first woman to fly across an ocean who went on to attempt being the first woman to fly around the earth when her plane encountered a series of problems and likely – but not definitively – crashed, with her never to be found again.
Earhart’s story has been the subject of numerous books, TV specials and at least one TV miniseries, but she’s never received a big-budget biopic until now. In the new film “Amelia,” two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank tries to bring Earhart and her impressive accomplishments to life, but is hamstrung by the fact that the act of flying a plane long-distance – even if one is setting records – has a limited visual excitement.
Combined with a cliched score by Gabriel Yared that veers wildly in tone from epic to tinkling-piano tragedy, and a script by veteran writers Anna Hamilton Phelan (“Gorillas in the Mist”) and Ron Bass (“Rain Man”) that has surprisingly limited narrative drive and dialogue that often sounds like it’s coming out of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which people talk in clipped, snappy tones simply because it’s the Roaring Twenties, “Amelia” never achieves liftoff as an entertaining picture.
The film covers the decade between the time she captured the world’s attention for the first female transatlantic flight in 1928 until her attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1938. The problem is that Swank’s Earhart never undergoes a major dramatic arc or change in her life; she’s tough as nails from start to finish, with only occasional glimpses of vulnerability. Combined with the fact that everyone knows she disappears in the end, there’s really nothing to hold an audience’s attention span. The whole thing plays as one of those movies that’s not necessarily good, but rather good for you.
Swank not only stars but co-executive produced the film, clearly seeing it as yet another iconic tough-gal role to complement her Oscar-winning turns in “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby.” But where those films gave her intense performances from Oscar-nominated Chloe Sevigny in “Boys” and Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman in “Baby,” “Amelia” provides her with strangely reserved, almost milquetoast performances from Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor – as her husband, publishing titan George Putnam, and her lover, pilot Gene Vidal, respectively.
In the end, the film marks a disappointingly conventional step back by world-class director Mira Nair from her powerful, compelling identity-driven 2007 film “The Namesake,” in which an Indian-American college student was torn between establishing his own unique American identity and honoring the heritage of his immigrant parents. Earhart never shows the same sense of conflict, but rather crashes and burns in a sea of indifference.
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77 Comments
It would be great if it could be proven that she wasn't killed in a crash. I saw a show where some folks claimed she was on a spy mission at the request of Roosevelt or something. She supposedly either was executed by the Japanese or returned to the US and lived out her life under another name. Apparently some real investigations were done a few decades later. Anyway, It would be great but I don't believe it for a second.
I find Swank kind of creepy. I'm not sure what it is, but I can't watch her stuff with out being distracted.
on a side note I just HULU'd some old Electric Company videos for my son, Imagine my surprise to see both Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman. I knew about Cosby's education degree but did not know of any involvement about Freeman. You know it is kind of cool not to know everything about a celebrity. I wish I knew less about more of them.
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but any movie starring richard geere is destined to be a failure. left wing nut roots always flop on screen these days.
Why did they cast Matt Damon as Amelia Earhardt?
Actually she is too manly to be Matt Damon.
Sounds like a great movie, up there with Ayn Ran's biography. What's next Garfield, the president who nobody but a fifth grader knows. When will hollywood learn biographical movies piss off people when embelished, and bore those who have no idea who Amelia was.
Uh oh, Richard Gere is involved….I'm sure the historical facts in this film have been sacrificed to promote some liberal agenda.
And yet another attempt to portray the golden age of aviation, and what was once the innate spirit of courage and adventure in the American people, is summarily dissed by the millennial press. Like Bay's Pearl Harbor, which was also roundly criticized for being schmaltzy and historically inaccurate, "Amelia" and similar movies such as "The Aviator" give us a glimpse into a past where Americans were truly bigger than life. We could use a few heroes right about now, and despite its warts, "Amelia" tries to give us one or two. If this keeps up, we'll soon be like Britain, producing nothing but pure sentimental schmaltz in a vain effort to recapture a glorious, but faded, past.
The minute I heard about this I knew it wasn't going to turn out well. I've been an Earhart enthusiast since I was in highschool. This movie is about seventy-years too late. It should've been made in 1940 with Katherine Hepburn in the lead — it probably would've been a classic.
I'm just curious, was Amelia's love interest in real life 30 years older than her, or is this just more Hollywood trying to keep an again star in the limelight. All through the 90's and early 00's I kept waiting to see a blockbuster with Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, and the Olsen twins – love that dare not speak it's name.
George Putnam was 10 years older than his wife. At the time of her death he was in his 50s, and Richard Gere is 60. So he's a little old for the character, but not absurdly so.
Sean Connery, I won't go there. But I can picture Eastwood yelling at them to put on some respectable clothes.
Is it me or does Hilary Swank look like she could eat an ear of corn through a picket fence?
John, I'll take those excellent British Ivory-Merchant period pieces any day over the contemporary slop we get from Hollywood. Even when these jokers do a historic movie it's riddled with the typical Hollywood lefty memes where whites are always racists, corporations are always greedy and America is always an amoral predator on the world stage.
I'll pass. I'm not shelling out to Hollywood one dime unless it's a movie of superb quality that doesn't have their typical lefty pc garbage and distortions embedded in it. And, it's just about always there.
Who's the "old guy" next to David Spade?
When is Hollywood gonna take a pay cut in order to have a little "Skin in the game", like the rest of us evil capitialists that pay taxes? Oh, that's right, no one is paying to see their crap movies anymore. See how the capitalist system corrects itself with no help from the gubbament?
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See, their big mistake was not choosing a white male as a bio subject. Then they could concentrate on the guy's various mental and moral issues like "A Beautiful Mind", or "The Aviator". Nothing like concentrating on your subject going nuts to perk up a story in the second act. But picking a member of the victimocracy to bio rules all that out. Can't show a role model for girls as having serious problems now, can we?
I think you're wrong about the success of the picture, though. These days such pictures are not made to entertain or make money per se, but to change the world. In this case get those young girls inspired and into an area where they are numerically under represented. Boo yah.
Yes, but in today's' world they will demand that the standards be watered down to accommodate the girls and guarantee their success. Amelia entered the male domain and excelled without demanding any special treatment.
The real Amelia was an okay pilot that did not have anywhere near the flying skills of some of her contemporaries (Pancho Barnes, Jackie Cochrane, Bobbi Trout, Bessie Coleman, etc) but had a better publicity machine. She founded an organization called the Ninety-Nines (women pilots) and then was shunned by some of the members because it was rumored she had an affair with the husband of one of the members.
Had she completed her around the world flight she would be another footnote in an aviation history book. Because she didn't complete the flight she is an historic icon.
As a female pilot myself I try to explain to people that I wish we would hold up other women pilots as idols instead of Amelia. (For example, the over 1,000 women who were WASP in WWII). Instead we are presented with movies about an okay pilot whose claim to fame is that she got lost.
People are interested in Amelia because she was a woman competing in what was, at that time, a man's game. She was an American. She did big, publicity-grabbing things and was somewhat photogenic. And she disappeared at the height of her fame. Any movie about Earhart is bound to be venerational in tone – as I assume this one is. However, the events we remember her for, her famous flights, were more like space missions – they took careful planning, funding, dealing with complex technical problems, as well as focus and discipline on the part of the participants. You *can* make stuff like that into a good movie (The Right Stuff, Apollo 13), but it doesn't come naturally. You need emotions, crises, peril, stuff to make the characters come to life rather than just going through the motions. I get the impression that Amelia herself wasn't prone to emotional displays (at least not in public), and her planning and flying abilities kept disasters to a minimum. It's hard to make an interesting story out of someone who's successful in just about everything they do.
her teeth look like a picket fence, kinda
There were other women flying back then, and they had strange lives and adventures that made Amelia's look boring in comparison. A movie about Jackie Cochrane, Pancho Barnes, Jean Batten, Mildred Bruce or Hanna Reitsch would feel more like Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Bruce, for example, was nearly captured by brigands when her plane crashed near the Persian Gulf.) Earhart did big, important things – these women did daring, crazy things. And they had problems: 'woman in a man's world' problems, they had romantic problems, they had money problems, they had legal problems, some of them had alcohol problems. Hanna Reitsch had Hitler problems. But they kept on flying. If you rolled them and their problems and their achievements into one female character and made a movie about her, you'd have something worth watching.
Bless you for mentioning Bessie Coleman! Far too unknown a personage. I would actually have preferred a Beryl Markham pic. "West With the Night" is a wonderful, lyrical book. I think that, sadly, Amelia Earhart has just fallen too far out of the pop culture memory, and Nair clearly made a very bland film.
Most of the reviews seem to agree Nair just made a bland movie about a potentially interesting subject for an audience that probably never cared about it to begin with. I don't think it's any more nefarious than that. I heard a story on NPR a while back (yes, yes, boo NPR) about astronauts who were visiting schools and were distressed to see most modern kids aren't terribly interested in their exploits, either. When asked if any wanted to be astronauts, few raise hands anymore whereas 20 years ago most would have. Early aviation? It's like asking a modern kid if they'd like to take become a charioteer.
It would be great if the dolts in Hollywood looking for heroes would make a movie about “Sully” Sullenberger's incredible landing in the Hudson.
Now that's a hero. An ordinary guy that simply applied all of his life long flying skills in the calmest of manner and saved everyone in a matter of minutes. He's the epitome of Hemingway's "courage is grace under pressure". Watching again a computer/air traffic control overlay his feat was astounding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpDNTbSsI0&fe...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/hilary-s...
Well this is kinda off…
Or making them work on a farm or something, get dirty, and treat themselves with some respect.
They'd claim it was "sexist" to show her as having mental issues or moral conflict, or even doubt in her ability to do what it was that she was doing.
Still, you have to give her credit – in a place full of young women like Meghan Fox and Felicity Hoffman, that a girl as homely as homemade soap was able to be successful just on sheer talent.
I been a pilot for 35+ years and I for one am not going to bother with this one, I know the story. She had some problems with making decisions , ok she was a media darling. As for being a spy, that is pure bs from the get go. What happened is simple, she made some small mistakes on that last leg and ran out of fuel. Simple as that. Jackie Cochrane would be a much better subject matter, heck how about the legend himself Charles E. Chuck Yeager? Nope is an other version of Amelia. Gee's how many does that make now?
I saw Richard Gere and lost interest. I can't stand his face.
It's a shame that the movie is getting a thumbs down. I was going to see it just on the subject matter.
Among pilots I don't believe Earhardt has all that great a reputation. In the Night at the Museum Amy Adams character (Amelia) tells Benn Stiller "You just have to follow your dream" – too which the sometimes cynical moi replied (Yes, and have a rich husband to finance your whims).
But to her piloting skills that is neither hear nor there – in Miami she ditched the life rafts that would have saved them (to save weight) and I believe left behind the long range radio antenna that certainly would have helped.
Some have said she got the alcoholic Fred Noonan to navigate because the top-rate navigators wouldn't fly with her.
It wasn't so much her piloting skills as her decisions she would make – I think when she crossed Brazil for Africa her Navigator kept telling her to head south on the African Coast and she insisted on heading north – they barely made it when she finally turned south –
Well time to walk the dog now…
I agree. I remember listening to a pilot who teaches flying talk about it on ABC radio, back when it happened.
He said every air line pilot practices that maneuver in a flight simulator, but they know, if it really happened, they will not be walking away.
It really was a miracle.
You know what I'd like to see? Something on Eddie Rickenbacker.
As I understand it he tried to enlist in the army air corp, was refused because of poor eye sight, so he raised a bunch of money, rounded up some pilots, and went over to France to fight WWI any way.
That and his company developed one of the most rockin' basses in the music industry, the 4001.
Wait! I thought that I read something about her being naked around here! WTF is this!? A review!? Where are the pics, man?
Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader taught me to read when I was a child. I loved the original Electric Company.
Been burned too many time by Hollywood's "Liberal Tell" (as Nolte calls it) so I rarely go to films anymore. By the looks of the box office, I'm not alone.
Anything Pixar.
Actually, I think the great mystery here is why anyone would go to see a Hillary Swenk movie. How did she get to be a movie star? She is one of the homeliest leading ladies to come along since… ever!!!
I just saw the poster for the movie. Bad poster. Not many people would know who Amelia is. Should of had the stars face on the poster instead. Doh!
Hey You Guys!!!
There doesn't seem to be any politics involved – they simply made a bad movie. It happens (more often than not, unfortunately).
The Rotten Tomatoes rating is only 17%!! http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/amelia_2009
And it doesn't help that every publicity photo of Hilary Swank in this film makes her look retarded.
(No offense.)
Yep, it's pretty awful now. Few kids seem to be interested in much of anything but digital pacifiers these days. Why learn to fly a real plane when you have X-Plane and Flight Simulator? Pilots are now more like bus drivers and the mystique has all but vanished. I am going to see this movie just because someone was misguided enough to make it. Who knows, it may not be the first review where the reviewer was full of bull. I've gone to plenty of other flicks that were panned and found them quite good. What surprises me is the sound thrashing this movie is getting here, at Breitbart. C'mon, Kate Hepburn is not going to be resurrected from the grave to play Amelia, folks.
Please go see it and then come back and comment. That is what I am going to do.
Hepburn actually made a movie about an aviatrix back in the 30's called "Christopher Strong." It was directed by Dorothy Arzner.
Sorry gang there's no "liberal agenda" to "Amelia." It's just a big plush weepie that doesn't inspire much in the way of tears. .
You mean it would have worked had they cast Mel Gibson in the lead?
Actually that's the most interesting aspect of the Earhart saga — the publicity machine that was created around her. Now THAT would have made an interesting movie.
It is also said that Glenn Curtiss should have gotten credit for the first powered flight. What is the problem with Amelia? Isn't she woman enough? Maybe she was just a little more savvy or had a great desire to be in the limelight, but either way, it's Amelia we're reading about and not Pancho.
The level of cynicism is just off the charts here. At least now people will be talking about Amelia Earheart once again and maybe, just maybe, those with a spark of imagination and wonder will go look her up and find out more. And we, as mostly conservatives, ought to be pushing this film rather than ragging on Amelia's flying skills and dissing the actors. No wonder young people turn us off.
Tell me what you think, if you like it I'll consider it.
Is "Christoper Strong" available on DVD?
Very true! The beginning of the publicity monster, although Lindbergh got eaten by it, too. I actually would like to see a proper film bio of Annie Oakley (Stanwyck's was fun but about as factual as "Amadeus"–the real Oakley's story is great enough not to need embellishing–there's another lady who used what media her era offered to become incredibly famous.
Tee hee! I uncharitably call her "Horseyface". My husband and I were joking about how she got some wings, now she's a pegaus.
'Tis true. I always complain how normally, in order to nab a leading role, a woman practically has to be perfection itself. However, it's okay for a man to be not that attractive. Of course, she's not normally cast in romantic roles. 'Cause you know, non-gorgeous people don't have romances. (eye roll)
Watch TV commercials. There's a plethora of young, thin, pretty wives, and then the husbands are always dumpy-looking. I pointed it out to my husband one day, and now he notices it all the time.
True, but it seems unlikely he'd participate–he comes off in real life as an incredibly humble man who would eschew making a movie about himself. You could make it without his input…but you'd really want it!
Sully would want to make a movie about union organizing. I'm sure no one on this site would aprove of that.
The trailer was boring. But I wouldn't have seen it anyway. Damn, those huge TEETH of Hillary's just turn me off. I've seen smaller incisors on Seattle Slew. If she had screen presence, I might be able to get over it. But she has none – which means I'm left with an actress whose acting talent is so minimal that the sight of her face only makes me think of Mr. Ed.
"No gerbils were harmed in the making of this film."
I will have to look those other people up, thank you for posting.
Hillary Swank naked in front of 6 year old
http://www.cinemablend.com/celebrity/Swank-Upset-...
Here, here.. this is a good example of how the human race is becoming more like farm aminal every day.
This movie could be called," The posum and the chipmonk"
Man, I'm a little taken aback at the harshness of the comments on Swank's looks. What's with the cattiness? Ease up! On the one hand posters to this site bemoan the superficialness of Hollywood's worship of beauty, then a movie is made with an actress who doesn't quite epitomize that false glamour and you pull out the knives! Yeesh! She's far from ugly, and she's a good actress.
I don't know about the DVD, but TCM shows it often.
Don't like Swank. Never did. Swank was fired from t.v. series 90210. I agreed.
As someone who loves classic airplanes enough to tear up at the sight, sound and smell of them, I can understand your point. But Hollywood is giving us precious little. "The Aviator" has its flaws but I consider it a pretty good movie. "Pearl Harbor", however… no. I´ll try to see this one, though.
Sure, all he cares about are unions 24/365. How many statements do you have to back that up?
But a few will always choose to do extraordinary things. Currently it´s this young Australian here.
http://www.youngestround.blogspot.com/
Wow, yeah, because that show was a bastion of talent and natural beauty??
I'll pass. Anything with Gere in it is anathema to me.
Fred MacMurray played Rickenbacker in a movie that was made in the 40s, I believe. But would still be a good subject to do again.
Now, now…LOL!!!
Coolness, thanks, I'll keep my eyes open for it. Thanks for the tip!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Rickenbacker
Yeager story? Apparently as a consultant to the movie The Right Stuff, he did steer the focus of the movie toward himself. If I recall Tom Wolfe the book author disowned the movie version over this change of focus.
Clearly we are talking about different movies. I just watched the film and it is excellent. I have no idea what movie this reviewer watched but it wasn't the beautifully-photographed and uplifting story I just viewed. The only explanations I can come up with for the hostile and inaccurate review posted here are that it is due to youthful cynicism, a complete lack of vision, a dearth of knowledge about America's aviation pioneers and their importance, animosity toward Hollywood actors who are more liberal than the reviewer would like, or perhaps the fact that the film was done in Canada rather than Hollywood.
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