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Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Hilary Swank and Richard Gere star in "Amelia."

I'd never heard of the movie "Amelia" before I went to see it. And after finishing the film, I know why.

"Amelia" is based on the life of Amelia Earhart; the famous woman pilot who was lost to the pages of history during an attempt to make a circumnavitigational flight of the world in 1937. Besides being an amazing pilot, she also helped bring women out of their de facto housewife roles society assigned to them. Following suit became an icon for women the world over. Amelia was a very fascinating person with an incredible life. This leads me to the problem. Why, exactly, is this movie so boring?

The movie is a telling of Earhart's life covering the period of 1928 to July of 1937. But, instead of focusing on more of the events that were going on around her and the incredible story that is her life, the movie pulls a "Pearl Harbor" and shells out a generic and downright boring love story between Earhart (Hilary Swank) and her eventual husband, George Putnam (Richard Gere), whilst skirting the actually interesting events of her life to the background. The problem here is that their relationship is as deep as a puddle in Death Valley-in summer.

Their relationship is tested and inevitably toughened by the intimacy she had with her aeronautics executive Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). But little of this makes sense to me. I have little to no idea why she fell in love with George in the first place or what, if anything, Gene gave her emotionally. It all falls flatter than the state of Kansas.

This is all worsened by the fact that I don't see any appeal in Swank or Gere as actors. Call my taste in acting what you will, but I don't find them appealing to watch on film under any known circumstances. Beyond that they undertake annoyingly fake 1930s accents that just make it all seem like they're trying all too hard to convince the audience that they really are in such a time period. It made me want to wish I could just skip to the part where Earhart, and further Swank, crashes her plane all just so I could go home and repress the past 111 minutes of my life.

It's not that I don't love a good biopic, or even find Earhart's life uninteresting-as it is anything but-it's just that this movie feels like nothing more than Swank's wish to cash in her tired, limited range of acting for yet another Oscar and the director's wish to aid her in such a feat. Swank is not very talented and mainstream critics need to stop treating her like she is. This movie embodies lifelessness. The writers somehow managed to turn a historic and inspiring woman's story into something that pains me to call cinema. Additionally, the movie stubbornly refuses to give Earhart the credit she deserves. To a point, I actually think the movie's producers knew this tripe of a film would insult the viewer as much as it did me.

Therefore, they did little to market it. I surely wouldn't want my name to be associated with such dross. It does explain why I'd never heard of it.

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