Mira Nair’s latest is a dull, bland, and almost completely forgettable effort that while capturing the look, sound, and stories of Amelia Earhart it fails to create any drama, tension, or just about any emotion inside of us over it’s run time.
Spoilers ahead if you some how have know grasp on history.
Picking up at the launch of Earhart’s tragic flight around the world we will float back and forth through her life from the moment she met her future husband George Putnam and multiple stages along her fateful flight. Right here from the get go the film is in trouble. The relationships that begin to form in Amelia’s life are quickly glossed over and the film jumps forward through time at a fairly strong pace. Earhart’s relationship with Putnam manifests almost out of thin air and next thing we know they are married. Ditto for an affair that arises in the film and implies infinitely more than it shows. All this would be fine if we at all believed in their relationship, one that a certain Earhart biographer deemed the love her life, but instead comes across as really nothing very passionate at all. In fact the film fails to rouse any passion at all, be it in its heroine’s relationships, her supposedly death defying flights, or her impact on the culture of America and the fame that she garnered. [Read more...]