Not Scorcese's best film

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2004)

Not Martin Scorcese's best film. Almost cartoonish with over rich colors and overacting. However, the costumes and sets were wonderful. Short and baby faced Leonardo DeCaprio was grossly miscast and seemed to know it and consequently overplayed his part and his squeaky voice grated. Only during the Senate hearings in 1947 did he look like Howard Hughes. John C. Reilly always succeeds and was great as Noah Dietrich. Alec Baldwin was terrific as Juan Trippe, the head of Pan American Airlines, and Alan Alda was just fantastic as Maine Senator Ralph Brewster, the corrupt Republican (are there any other kind?) in the pocket of Juan Trippe and PanAm. Cate Blanchett could not have been better as Katharine Hepburn. Kate Beckinsale was okay as Ava Gardner but didn't have the cachet. The movie ended with Hughes' descent into madness in 1947-1949 and did not include any of the scenes of the Sands Hotel days when he had long fingernails and long hair. He owes his obsessive compulsive disorder to his mother, who "washed" his penis when he was an adolescent, which is the disturbing and totally unnecessary opening scene.
The best parts of the movie were (1) fantastic airplanes and old cars throughout, (2) Hughes' amazing survival of a spectacular crash of an experimental plane into palatial homes in Beverly Hills, (3) the takeoff and flight of the Spruce Goose, (4) the Senate hearings, (4) the night time flight over LA with Hughes romancing Hepburn, (5) dinner with Katharine Hepburn's family in New England, and (5) the crash landing of another experimental plane in a beet field. Worth it just for those scenes. The film was marred by about 30 to 40 minutes of boring scenes that seemingly would never end of Hughes going mad, urinating into milk bottles, compulsive hand washing, muttering to himself, etc.
Certainly not a film to see a second time, which is always the mark of a good film for me. A movie nearly 3 hours long can not drag and this film sure as hell dragged. With the exception of Alda, Baldwin, O'Reilly and Blanchett, most of the young actors and actresses had no idea who they were playing. The film failed to show the importance of Hughes's role in the aviation, oil and film industries.