RSS
Home
Review of Amelia
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
© Fox Searchlight
Don't you hate it when film critics make a seasonal preview of upcoming movies and they pick which ones will be potential Oscar contenders? They think they're so smart just because they've watched a lot of movies. Well, anyone who predicted Amelia to have a strong showing come February was just flat out wrong.
Amelia Earhart was a woman who made great strides for gender equality not just in the field of aviation but for women in general. America was still fresh from instating Women's Suffrage when she came along and showed that women are perfectly capable of flying planes. A story like that practically cries for a movie to be made about it. And so it has; with Hilary Swank in the title role along with Richard Gere as George Putnam, Amelia's publicist and husband, and directed by Mira Nair. Everything about that sounds like it would make for a compelling and rich drama on the big screen about chasing your dreams but good gravy was it boring.
Very rare is it that I have to fight the urge to fall asleep while watching a movie in a theater but such was the case with Amelia. There are some instances where we get to see the behind-the-scenes drama that went into Earhart's notable contributions to aviation but for the most part, the film just hops from one public appearance to the next. Basically, it seems like they just filmed what anyone can read in books and articles about the pilot. The majority of the film just plods along and the dialogue is often very cheesy. This is the part of the review where a lesser critic would say something like, "Amelia never really takes flight." Get it?
Speaking of cheesy dialogue, the performances weren't that great either. Swank is an excellent actress with a pair of Oscars to her name but aside from bearing an uncanny resemblance to the actual Earhart, she's not very believable. The biggest problem, and this goes for Gere's portrayal as well, is that they both sound like narrators for a 1920s newsreel every time they speak. Did people talk like that all the time back in the 1930s? If so, that had to be irritating because it certainly was in this movie. Amelia is a big let down, Nair and screenwriters Ronald Blass and Anna Hamilton Phelan must have had great intentions going in but the truth is that it fails to deliver.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
