CNN iReport

After eagerly rushing out to the theater this weekend to catch the new movie Amelia about the aviation career and personal life of aviatrix Amelia Earhart, I was disappointed to find a sad little film that could have been fantastic, but was not. The film could have shown its audience what it took to be Amelia, but it did not. It could have inspired us to achieve, but it did not, really. It could have been so many things, but it was not. In trying to accomplish too much, the film failed to accomplish anything.

Much of the film was wasted trying to make Amelia more “attractive” to her audience by placing her in the arms of not one, but two leading men. The filmmakers touched on her father’s alcoholism, repeatedly and clumsily, by alluding to her constant battle with alcohol in the lives of the men around her. The film suggested that Amelia struggled with the discrepancy between her personal goals and social expectations of her as a woman, but these interesting aspects became lost in what amounted to a simple chronological approach divulged through the overused device of flashbacks while Amelia flew her final flight.

The only thing that might be said in favor of this chaotically executed movie is that it suggested Amelia was a complicated woman, but I was left feeling little sympathy for her because she was portrayed as a puppet that was used by the men in her life for their own devices. Unfortunately, little time was spent developing her as a person in her own right. She was a person who had the dream to fly and, despite the odds against her gender, achieved more than most men of the era. She was intelligent, business savvy, and gutsy without bravado, but little of this seemed to matter to the filmmakers.

Hilary Swank did her best with a shoddy script and clumsy directing, but the film did not demonstrate the skill with which she portrayed the role. Richard Gere as Earhart’s husband, George Putnam, shone through occasionally, but most often seemed clouded by the limitations of the script as well. The best parts of the entire film were the beautiful costumes which demonstrated a subtlety that was lost in most other areas of the film.

Before rushing out to the theater as I did, read up on Amelia so that you can really appreciate whom she was and so that you can image for yourself what Amelia would have thought of this film about her extraordinary life.