Episodic bio-pic never really adds up

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2005)

Over 2000 years ago Aristotle observed that a selection of true incidents from someone's life doesn't necessarily add up to an effective story. THE AVIATOR proves Aristotle's point.
Here's a movie that takes a lot of really interesting people and makes them -- not very interesting. The weakness is mainly the superficial script, which covers Hughes the aviation pioneer (much of this is quite exciting), Hughes the Hollywood producer (this is sketchy and disjointed), Hughes the womanizer (sketchy and uninvolving), and Hughes the obsessive-compulsive eccentric -- but never quite succeeds in pulling all these elements into a persuasive whole.
At the end of this very, very long film, I didn't really *feel* anything about Hughes, either positive or negative. He seems as cold and remote at the end as at the beginning and the last hour drags.
What Scorcese needed was a screenplay that would make us care about Hughes -- either love him or hate him -- the way CITIZEN KANE does. But THE AVIATOR is no KANE. It tries to cover too much, and you never really know why some things were included and others omitted; the result is the incidents covered seem shallow, obvious, and quickly glossed-over.
Still, there are a number of excellent scenes in the film. My favorite is Hughes' visit to Katherine Hepburn's family, where her relations -- as headstrong and self-involved as she is -- treat him with hilarious rudeness.
I should confess I have a problem with DiCaprio: I have trouble accepting him as a grown-up. He always seems to me like a 14 year-old boy playing an adult in a junior High School play. He's a pretty good actor; he applies himself and he's quite talented. I don't know why that boyish thing bothers me, just as it did in TITANIC, where Kate Winslett seemed more like his aunt than his lover.
Even Scorcese's period mise en scene fails to persuade. The sets and costumes are all so colorful, so squeaky-clean, they seem made for a musical comedy rather than a serious period drama. And Scorcese makes too many obvious choices, such as the movie Hughes watches that convinces him the public now wants sound films. Of course it's THE JAZZ SINGER.
As in NEW YORK, NEW YORK, there's a ton of painstaking period detail, but it doesn't ring true. You don't feel you're really in the 1930s and 40s, any more than you believe Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow. Cate Blanchett tries a little too hard as Katherine Hepburn, though it's basically an intelligent and effective performance. Her strenuous efforts to imitate Hepburn's well-known vocal mannerisms are distracting at times.
So I can see why THE AVIATOR lit no fires either at the box office or at the Oscars. A huge amount of work and money went into a film that is frequently interesting, but finally not all that compelling.