Because we're done with band competitions, because my son is interested in aviation, because the film won lots of awards, because we never saw it when it was showing in theaters, we stayed home last night and watched The Aviator on DVD. All day I've been trying to figure out why I found the film utterly awful.
For one thing, it's too long by at least half an hour; I kept hoping another airplane would crash and burn and put the entire film out of its misery. But that's not the only reason. Too many of the characters are thoroughly one-dimensional, including Alan Alda's sleazy politician and Alec Baldwin's reprise of his role from Glengarry Glen Ross. Cate Blanchett's cartoonish caricature of Katherine Hepburn was laughable, one of the few amusing spots in an otherwise humorless film. She tromped and sputtered like Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, but in that film Hepburn's energy was more than matched by Cary Grant's. Poor Cate Blanchett has only Leo DiCaprio, who is just, let's face it, small--and I'm not talking about physical stature. I kept having this feeling I was watching an elaborate dream sequence in one of the Our Gang comedies, with DiCaprio as Alfalfa.
But there's one other thing that really annoyed me about this film, and it's taken me all day to put my finger on it: It's clear that Martin Scorsese wants us to view Howard Hughes as a sort of David righteously defying the twin Goliaths of the film and airline industries, and while it's true that Hughes was a victim of his own peculiar neuroses, he was, after all, Howard Hughes. Since when does the richest man in the world get to play the role of spunky little David? Especially when the penultimate scene features one of Hughes's minions reassuring him by saying, "Howard, everyone works for you."
Despite all the lovely airplanes, The Aviator doesn't work for me. My only consolation is that I didn't have to spend $8 on a ticket.
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