Not a bad effort, but much too long

Rating: 6/10 (7 February 2005)

Leonardo DiCaprio is marvelous in this movie as the title character. Especially during the Senate hearings, he looks and acts uncannily like Howard Hughes. I was quite fascinated by the movie, especially at first. We learn about Howard Hughes's wide array of interests, including aviation, film-making and actresses. I have read that many like Cate Blanchett as Kathrarine Hepburn. I found that she was a little too exaggerated with her accent, and that distracted me. She did look a lot like Ms Hepburn, though. After the first hour or so, however, the movie started to drag. Yes, we know that Mr. Hughes was rather eccentric and he was (frankly) a little nuts. But all the scenes (slight spoiler) where he's naked in his screening room peeing into bottles get long and monotonous and, yes, boring. I guess I don't mind admitting that I was confused. The movie doesn't really explain (other than blaming Howard's mother in the first scene of the movie) why he was such an obsessive compulsive when it came to cleanliness...and how that obsession turned into madness. I did find it interesting ( if this movie is to be accepted as fact...I somehow doubt it) that while he was in the midst of a break down, he was able to pull himself out of it to appear before congress. Anyway, the movie was worth seeing, but I don't believe it deserves the raves it got.