Too much Hughes

Rating: 6/10 (26 December 2004)

Certainly a good and informative film but it lacked dramatic depth and for us didn't generate great emotion. The film so focused on Hughes' ambitions and sad illnesses that the characters with whom he interacted seemed more like part of the scenery than independent characters to care about. (One exception perhaps was Hughes' aviation expert, they did seem to have a real relationship.) Maybe that's a fatal flaw when you set out to cover so much of the productive life of man like this.
I also didn't buy the idea that his mother's warnings and washings accounts for what happened to Hughes. Maybe Scorsese wanted to create a Rosebud/Citizen Kane feel, at least that's what popped into my mind. But Hughes' problems went way beyond an anal mother.