AMELIA (a review)

The biopic of Amelia Earhart, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere. This is an okay movie but with the problems that many biopics have -- we already know the coolest part, so to make a movie work, especially when dealing with a famous person that everyone knows, the question is going to be the approach, the context of what they did that will give added meaning to it. Unfortunately, that's where this movie comes up short.

So Amelia Earhart was a famous female pilot, the second person to fly across the Atlantic, who disappeared as she was trying to fly around the world. This movie takes us from a very young Earhart in Kansas to a young woman who is recruited by a publisher to be the first female to fly across the Atlantic. Except she isn't going to really fly. She's going to be more of a passanger, then they will publish a book and make lots of money. It works. Earhart crosses the Atlantic (with a man actually flying the plane) and she becomes the most famous female pilot in the world. But she is frustrated that it is fame she hasn't earned. Then while helping her write the book, the publisher falls in love with her. The rest of the movie builds to the final flight where she disappears as she struggles with her marriage, with her place in aviation as another female pilot challanges her, as she struggles for money to pay for her flying, and as she struggles to accomplish something that she thinks will be worthy of her fame.

The movie really has all the parts of a powerful tragic story. Even the events of the final flight -- an uncharged battery, communication problems, a navigator who got drunk the night before -- all seem like that tragic storm of circumstance that should work. But it doesn't. The movie feels episodic and cold. The main problem is that they don't get after it enough. Stories are about fascination -- so what is the fascination with this story? Is it about a woman who gets fame she doesn't feel she deserves and then pushes herself more and more to accomplish something worth her fame? Is it about a woman who screws things up with the man she loves only to regain him but too late. Is it a Titanic-like story of the way circumstance can overwhelm us? And the problem is it is kind of all of them, but it never feels like it gets beneath the surface. None of these are explored with nearly the intensity that they need, since we already know how the story will end.

For woman looking for a Titanic-lite with Richard Gere as the man who lives and Hilary Swank as the woman who doesn't, then maybe this will be enjoyable. Or if you have a special interest in Earhart. Otherwise, while it could be a good story, it just isn't told with enough passion for it to be engaging.