TBOExtra.com - TBOExtra is Tampa Bay Entertainment Online

Movie review: 'Amelia' stays set on autopilot

Fox Searchlight

As Amelia Earhart, Hilary Swank exposes what could be her prime limitation: She doesn't have much range.

By DAVID GERMAIN

The Associated Press

Published: October 23, 2009

Updated: 10/22/2009 03:47 pm

Related Links

Considering the risks Amelia Earhart took, losing her life in the call of aviation, Hilary Swank and director Mira Nair don't put much on the line in their film biography "Amelia."

Swank and Nair play it safe to the point of benumbing this woman's life, leaving Earhart as remote and muted as she is in the black-and-white photos and news footage of the aviator included at the film's end.

"Amelia" is a biopic on autopilot. We get the facts of Earhart's pioneering achievements, her marriage to her promoter (Richard Gere), her fling with a fellow pilot (Ewan McGregor). And we get pretty pictures of airplanes in flight.

But this dowdy movie rarely embodies Earhart's passions, whether for flying or for the men in her life. Swank's Earhart repeatedly tells people how she has to fly or die. Yet when she's in the air, she's as stiff and closed-off as a passenger stuck in a middle coach seat on a trans-Atlantic flight.

Much of the fault lies in the screenplay by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, a script based on two Earhart biographies. That should have given the filmmakers a surfeit of material.

Instead, "Amelia" plays like a Cliffs Notes summation of Earhart's life, the dialogue ranging from languid to soporific, the majesty of her moments in flight trivialized by empty voice-overs from Swank.

Lovely aerial images, lush landscapes and rich sets and costumes are the film's lone strengths. In almost every other regard, "Amelia" veers off course.

All the other components for an engaging chronicle are there. A grand life that ends in tragedy and epic mystery. A filmmaker in Nair who has a keen feel for bold women and zestful lives.

Then there's Swank, whose career is perplexing.

As Earhart, Swank exposes what could be her prime limitation: She doesn't have much range. Swank can tear up the screen in raw street drama. She's miserably out of her skin as the stately Earhart, though.

"Amelia" flirts with potentially interesting aspects of Earhart's story — a torn conscience over her personal success during the Depression, the frivolity endured as a spokesmodel for luggage.

Sadly, these moments are tossed in to no purpose, like stuffy airport layovers in really interesting destinations you wish you had the time to go out and explore.