Amelia: BD Review
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Page 1 of 3 Fox / 111 Minutes / 2009 / Rated PG / Street Date: February 2, 2010
Ignored by audiences and poo-pooed by critics, Amelia was supposed to be a slam-dunk, a biopic that both screamed "OSCAR!" and mobilized older viewers in the country to flock to a film about a woman who galvanized the world long before girl power was a pop-song familiarity. It also marks the big-budget Hollywood debut of Mira Nair, director of Monsoon Wedding, a filmmaker who has kept up critical accolades outside a mainstream American audience who was primed and prepared to enter the multiplex Zeitgeist with a bullet. Turns out, though, that Amelia is one of the dullest biographical pictures in years, a movie that is unconvincing emotionally, didactic in form and utterly glacial in pace. It goes without saying that Hilary Swank is a perfect Amelia - between her prowess as an actor and the film's excellent makeup, she almost makes you do a double take, like you're seeing the real thing - but script and direction here can't keep up with her. Amelia offers us one grand performance and a sea of disappointments.
The main issue with the film is that it wants to showcase all things Amelia Earhart, and this character saturation leaves the film feeling stretched thin and unimmersive. Each facet of Earhart's career gets a quick, ten-minute recap of sorts in Amelia, and that's that - nothing in the film lingers, little takes root. And the movie's treatment of the aviator's question-mark-inducing end is downright enraging: Choosing not to make any kind of hypothesis on Amelia's unfortunate demise, Nair's biopic ends up limping to a close, choosing surface-level pandering over any kind of bold artistic statement. If one squints and doesn't pay attention to the soap-opera-grade histrionics in Amelia's script, the movie has the shell of a good, old-fashioned Hollywood bio-epic, but the film as a cumulative whole is an unfortunate example of base-level filmmaking on all fronts. There's an amazing historical story to tell here, and Swank is the perfect big-name star to anchor the picture, but not even a supporting turn from Ewan McGregor can salvage Amelia: No offense to Ms. Earhart, but her biopic crash-lands upon takeoff. |
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