By Lauren Dixon

November 3, 2009

Grade: C

Well, good news everyone.

 Hollywood still has a strong, horsey-mouthed, borderline man-ish actress to play history’s most daring and boundary-breaking females.

Yes, Hilary Swank continues to fulfill the roles that no other A-list prima-donna would willingly choose to partake in. Apparently she can’t get enough of the power trips, even after gutsy performances in “Million Dollar Baby,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” and “Iron Jawed Angels.” It’s her tried and true ticket onto the Best-Actress ballot.

In “Amelia,” Swank portrays the legendary female pilot Amelia Earhart, whose tragic end was met while attempting to circumnavigate the world, a feat in which no one had previously succeeded. Directed by Mira Nair, the biopic documents the aviation career of Earhart while also taking a stab at revealing her personal life.

Swank doesn’t step out of her comfort zone as a pro-women’s rights heroine, and for the most part, her performance is pretty predictable. Narrated continually with Earhart’s actual diary, Swank gives Earhart’s character a somewhat annoyingly passionate tone. The viewer is repeatedly bludgeoned with the idea of gender role reversal and Rosie the Riveter type images.

The movie begins with Earhart’s final journey from Miami in June of 1937 and immediately the audience, with any knowledge of the flyer’s history, is set up with a mindset of impending doom. Amidst camera flashes from eager photographers and corny “the world is my oyster” jargon, Earhart kneels atop one of the wings of the Electra. Earhart takes flight and we know it’s all going downhill from here. Literally.

“Amelia” pans back, taking brief somewhat disjointed shots of Earhart’s life. All the glitz and glamour that is the 1930s is unquestionably in place. The costumes and sets are unquestionably done well, young women with flapper hair-dos and bucket hats peruse the New York streets alongside boyishly handsome men toting Lucky strikes. Swank herself, although a tomboy in essence, has an unparalleled ability to look classy whether she’s in riding pants or a backless silk gown. 

Some of the scenes are a little exhausted with the period drama genre. One clip begins from the perspective of a casually moving, velvety-voiced jazz singer, while Earhart and company chat business with each other. Really? How many times are directors going to use this?

In an attempt to throw in an element of romance, Nair plays out Earhart’s marriage to publisher George Putnam, played by everyone’s favorite silver fox Richard Gere. Earhart again breaks down societal barriers when she tells Putnam she is not a fan of monogamy, that marriage is just an “attractive cage.” She eventually caves but forces Putnam to accept her affair with Professor Gene Vidal (played by a stunning Ewan McGregor).  The audience is again disappointed when the steamy love affair is summed up in a five-second elevator kiss.

Every now and then it flashes forward to Earhart’s definitive flight, as she soars wide-eyed over the ever-popular “exotic” cliché of giraffes and zebras stampeding in Africa. We glimpse Earhart’s true affinity for the air, but are never fully able to grasp from where this devotion stems.

“Amelia” doesn’t surprise the audience even through the very end, when the base team is unable to reach Earhart despite numerous efforts to communicate via radio and Morse code. We semi-expect the director to hit us with a new slant on the Earhart disappearance theory, but all the viewer is left with is a conventional pan of the sea below and Richard Gere reflecting amongst a pile of rocks on the beach.

While “Amelia” inspires the audience to do the impossible, the movie finds itself unable to locate a strong enough screenplay. The viewer never really gets a sense of Earhart’s motivation or drive, other than a young Amelia looking up at the sky admiring planes. A real shocker.

Little to no background of the amazing Amelia Earhart is set into motion, an element this script desperately needed. Perhaps the subject matter of this movie was better left in the hands of James Cameron, a master at man vs. machines.

It could be the safe PG rating or the lack of character development, but unfortunately “Amelia” falls flat into a pool of clichés with high caliber sets too grand for the script. The viewer is left feeling exactly like Earhart, lost at sea.