this movie is absolutely not that bad as they say

[deleted]

Agree 100%. I avoided it due to the low ratings but something told me to give it a try.

This movie is like watching womens basketball. Sure, there's stuff going on, but as time goes by you discover that you don't care and the outcome doesn't really matter. Plus it's as boring as all hell.

It's not that bad, but it's not good either.

Where it fell down was in the story.

Granted, some people's stories are just too big to film and Amelia's personality seemed to have been formed as a girl and as an adult she was a private and complex woman, but it seems like they didn't have the budget or scope to really dig into her life.

From what little I've read, it seemed Gene Vidal not Putnam, was the love of Amelia's life. I mean are the stories true that when she flew she was wearing Gene's boxer shorts? If it is, what does that say about their relationship?

Yet what does the movie show? An all too brief affair with Gene, just to have Amelia go scooting back after her husband like a good little monogamous wife after her husband shows the first sign of jealousy and not holding Putnam to the pact he agreed to when she consented to marry him (which was to an open marriage).

Sounds like producers were pandering to the audience's morals rather than showing the woman as she really was.

So instead of seeing the complex woman formed from her youth and the socially- atypical-for-the-times complicated and free-spirited life she led, we're just left with the boring shallow parts of the woman in order that the movie reach a large audience - a woman who loved to fly, who became a celebrity, who endorsed products and was a nice married woman.

Bleh.

Ewan McGregor, as usual, was wasted in this part. He always gets parts that SHOULD be large and important in movies, but then his part gets cut to shreds by the director or the story. Hugely talented, amazingly emotive, sensitive and charismatic and he has maybe 6 lines of dialogue in the whole movie.

Richard Gere was - as usual - calling it in. Doesn't he keep playing the same role over and over again?

Swank looked the part entirely, had the speech rhythms down pat, but since we didn't know the woman Amelia from the story, Swank was basically just reciting the lines and not inhabiting the woman as she is normally wont to do with her characters.

And I like the director. She is an incredibly lyrical movie-maker. But her writers let her down and so - apparently - did the studio, wanting an audience-friendly, non-offensive biopic.

What a disappointment.



Team Jolie

not as bad, but twice as boring.

I agree it's not as bad as some critics (both professional and amateur) claim it to be, but it could've been so much better. It was perfectly cast and had very high production values, but "Amelia" suffered from a weak script that glossed over or ignored significant points in Earhart's life. Extreme focus was placed on Amelia's relationships with Putnam and, to a lesser extent, Vidal. By playing up the romantic life of Earhart and framing that around the public events of her life, the film presents a skewed vision of Earhart in which she passionately loves the men in her life...and also flew a few airplanes here and there.

I suppose those desiring a romantic drama about Earhart will be well pleased, but what's problematic for me is this is the fictional interpretation of a screenwriter. With such a celebrated, very real historical figure as Earhart, I'd much rather see a dramatic film centered around just what she's so famed for in the first place - her successes (and failures) in the field of aviation.

In some respects, "Amelia" succeeds in that regard. The closing dramatization of Amelia's final flight is very well done indeed, and I enjoyed the brief scenes that displayed her at times uncomfortable promotion of products that had little or nothing to do with aviation. But far too often her professional life takes a backseat for the hackneyed romantic vision the screenwriter apparently had. Further, I never felt the film really emphasized just how defiantly bold Earhart was in trying to fight the very nearly misogynistic mores of the time. The was particularly surprising to me considering Mira Nair directed.

Quite simply, Earhart was an even more amazing woman than this film would suggest (as anyone who has read at least one bio of her can attest to), and I think that's the major complaint people have about this film. In the end, "Amelia" is a romantic drama, and should not be classified as a "biopic".

Actually, it's worse than "they" say.

Thank you. I agree.