By Ned Jordan
Amelia Earhart was a pioneer of aviation and women's rights, and arguably the
most famous woman of her time, and quite frankly she deserves a lot better than
Amelia. The story of a simple Kansas farm girl who grew up to accomplish such
amazing feats and died near the end of what would have been her greatest triumph
should easily provide plenty of dramatic fodder for an engaging film, and yet
Amelia manages to be about as mundane and pedestrian a film as a classroom
educational video produced fro junior high students and about as exciting to
watch as it is to read the Wikipedia entry on Amelia Earhart. All of the
highlights of her professional life are here, each delivered in bite-sized
pieces before moving on to the next, seemingly to prevent them from having any
sort of chance to develop any dramatic impact. A cross-country, all woman pilot
air race is reduced to a few minutes before the start of the race in which
Amelia argues against shortening the race and her husband/promoter implies to
other racers that they should let Amelia win, followed by a short clip from a
newsreel about the race, and then a shot a shot of three of the planes landing
and then it's on to the next episode in Earhart's life. It's as if the director
Mira Nair was simply working her way down a checklist of events without much
desire to tie them together into something resembling a coherent narrative or to
delve into the character of the woman behind those events. I feel like I know
less about Earhart than I did before I saw the film. Hillary Swank does a good
job of emulating Earhart's speech and mannerisms, but the director obviously did
not work too hard to get strong performances out of her actors, and Richard Gere
and Ewan McGregor turn in merely functional turns as the two romantic interests
in Earhart's life. The lack of passion and connection between Swank and her
romantic leads is not too surprising as the entire film lacks passion and could
simply be described as being dull. Which is a shame, because Earhart's life was
anything but
The blu-ray version of the film does show off some of the film's gorgeous
shots of Depression-era planes in flight over scenic expanses, the film's one
and only strong suit. The sound is excellent, but unfortunately the sounds of
aircraft in flight are perpetually drowned out by an over-the-top orchestral
soundtrack. Special features include a couple of interesting short pieces on the
aircraft restoration and recreation that went on during the film, and it's good
to see that at least some in Hollywood are avoiding the crutch of CGI these
days. There are a couple of short features on the film and supposedly on Earhart,
but they are both essentially the same thing and feature the filmmakers patting
each other on the back for doing such a good job of recreating Earhart's life,
with Earhart herself only a secondary character. The only decent look you'll get
at Earhart out of the whole thing is from a collection of old newsreels, but
little work has been done on the sound and it's difficult to hear Earhart's
voice during her speeches.
Final Rating:
