The classic holiday fruitcake combines ingredients like dried fruits, nuts and sugar. Alone, these items are tasty treats, but when mixed together to form a fruitcake, the seemingly scrumptious ingredients typically make for a clustered, unpleasant mess.
Director Mira Nair's latest film, "Amelia" (2009), a biographical flick about American aviatrix Amelia Earhart, blends a story about a global icon with a two-time Academy Award winner, two prominent leading men and a $40 million budget, to make … well, a fruitcake. The film features poor individual performances with a boring, disjointed script, resulting in a weak tribute to Earhart's legacy.
Riding the coattails of successful biopics like "Ray" (2004), "Walk the Line" (2005) and "Public Enemies" (2009), "Amelia" was expected to hit theaters with a bang. The film follows the life of Earhart, the Kansas native who gained celebrity status after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928. It stars Hillary Swank in the title role, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor.
The film delves into Earhart's acquaintance with George P. Putnam (Gere), a publisher and Earhart's future husband, who sponsors her transatlantic flight in order to provide a story for a book he can later publish. Earhart is only a passenger during her first transatlantic flight, as two male copilots control the plane. Upon returning to America, Earhart dedicates her time to delivering speeches and breaking barriers for female pilots as she works towards her goal of a solo flight across the Atlantic.
Earhart's relationship with Putnam escalates quite quickly and expediently in the film, but the focus is mainly on Earhart's professional goals. After completing a solo flight across the Atlantic, Earhart attempts her ultimate objective, a flight around the world. She takes off with her navigator, Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), though her dreams come to a mysterious and heartbreaking end.
Splicing vignettes of her childhood into the larger story of her attempt at a flight around the world, "Amelia" is a visual masterpiece. Shots of Earhart's Electra airplane soaring over stunning mountaintops and rolling desert plains are a highlight of the film. Aside from its aesthetically pleasing scenes, though, the film fails to entertain audiences and it needlessly idealizes Earhart.
In biographical films, viewers thirst for dark secrets to be revealed, for characters to be humanized. In the successful "Ray," fans got a snapshot of Ray Charles' personal life, including the death of his brother and his drug addiction. "Amelia," though it includes several scenes centering on Earhart's extramarital relationship with Gene Vidal (McGregor), does not depart from the perspective of the tabloids as they portrayed her back in the 1930s — as an eternally cheery and moral individual. Swank keeps a gaping smile plastered to her face throughout the film, and her character's affair with Vidal is downplayed.
Swank gives a forgettable performance. She has an uncomfortable southern drawl and has not looked this androgynous since her Academy Award-winning performance in "Boys Don't Cry" (1999). Gere and McGregor are solid as always, but the script fails to provide their respective characters with much substance. The entire film feels like a series of events rather than a collective, coherent story.
"Amelia" leaves audiences yearning for more drama. While there is opportunity for suspense in the scene leading up to Earhart's mysterious disappearance at sea, it is frittered away by a lengthy back-and-forth between Earhart and air traffic controllers at Howler's Island. Aside from a scene or two alluding to Earhart's alcoholic father and subsequent disdain for drunkards, the film does not cut to the core of Earhart's personal character.
When a film is concentrated on one individual, it must develop that individual's character rather than merely recount a series of events in that person's life. "Amelia" is overly ornate and is ultimately tedious. For a salute to the legacy of American heroine Amelia Earhart, viewers are better off watching Amy Adams' performance in "Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian" (2009) than heading to theaters to see "Amelia."
