Movie review: An unhappy landing for 'Amelia'

"Amelia," a glossy but misbegotten biography of pioneering flier Amelia Earhart, is set mostly in 1937, the year of her death. The film could have been produced then, too. It's bland, creaky moviemaking of the old school. The film was lavishly produced, with great care given to the sets and costumes and makeup, but the spirit is missing. There's no electricity in it, no smart talk, no flair.

The result is pure Hollywood, sacrificing every value for visual glamour and predigested drama. It helps if you're interested in the factors involved in getting an airplane someplace and back.

Hilary Swank bestrides the action in chic leather jackets and high-waisted trousers, with her trademark attitude of steely determination. The story is about Earhart's elevation to international celebrity at the hands of publisher George Putnam. Putnam brought out Charles Lindbergh's bestseller a few years earlier and now he wants to repeat his triumph with a daredevil woman.

Richard Gere plays Putnam with a clipped, faintly absurd Philadelphia Main Line accent, as if he's suffering from a form of lockjaw. He markets Amelia brilliantly; a sequence adding up her endorsements for luggage and cameras is staged like the big production number in a campy musical.

Amelia is too pure of spirit to relish the money and fame, however. She's only in it to finance her expensive addiction to air travel, where she has pure freedom and control. When Putnam proposes, the caged bird imagery all but hits you in the head.

With its lofty themes of female empowerment percolating amid a high-romantic visual design, "Amelia" is like a failed chemistry experiment. The screenplay turns her life into a battle-of-the-sexes, can-women-have-it-all debate acted out at 7,000 feet, and it adds nothing new to the eternal work vs. family conundrum. The words put in Earhart's mouth seem to have come from a suffragist leaflet.

Nor does the film's detour into sexual adventurism spark much heat. Earhart's adultery with civil aviation advocate Gene Vidal manages to make the real-life affair feel like sheerest fantasy. Swank, the least sensual of actresses, comes off like a forbidding, ironclad spinster. As Vidal, Ewan McGregor gazes at her with big, ardent eyes but you never believe she's got his motor humming.

Mira Nair directed, fumblingly. Every clichéd action begets a clichéd reaction. Planes never take off or land without a gaggle of extras waving their caps in greeting. Actors pace the floor to express agitation and scamper barefoot in the surf when they are in love. Swank beams and scowls on cue but rarely persuades us that we're watching a human being caught unawares.

Aviation films have a charm all their own, and it's wonderful to watch mirror-polished prop planes rumbling over snow-white clouds. The scenes aren't shaped to lead anywhere, though. "Amelia" is beautiful, but the editing is so self-destructive that it's as if somebody slashed Nair's canvases. Even though the movie hops from Wales to Pakistan to Hawaii, the effect is as static as a stack of vacation postcards. When it's pretty it's very pretty, but there are long, deadly stretches. When Earhart takes off on her final, fatal trans-Pacific flight, you may guiltily think: It's about time.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186