A bowl of oatmeal

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2006)

And I'll explain that - it is like every flake of Howard Hughes's life was tossed into a bowl and regurgitated haphazardly. For one, his OCD is shown in extremis through parts of the film (he lives naked, surrounded by tissues and bottles of his own urine) and yet he is able to drag himself together and appear coherently in front of a Senate hearing.
Yes, I would buy there were tiny signs of his disorder early in his life, but it was not full blown until the last decade.
I didn't like Leonardo in the part, he is too much of a one-note actor to handle the complexity, sexiness, power and drive of the Hughes character. DiCaprio is too slight in every way. Cate Blanchett, as Katharine Hepburn needed a more tenacious grip on her character, her accent and mannerisms were too inconsistent, but then again she was playing off the anorexic performance of DiCaprio.
The time-lines were completely out of whack, one example: Katharine leaving Howard for Spencer? No.
Ava Gardiner was seriously miscast as well, if anyone has caught her in one of her incredible film performances you will know what I mean, she is woefully ill-served here.
Some of these larger than life heroes need a story that will reflect their magnetism and the reality of their lives and with more care taken to the details that are often anachronistic and irritating in attempts such as these. (Example being the opening mommy hygiene scene which is used to back-story his OCD, please, we're not quite that gullible!!) A shame. Some of the bigger scenes are truly wonderful, the scene within the Cocoanut Grove being one of them, the busy backlots and the CGI scenes of the flights being a few more. Also the music was captivating. And marvellous cinematography. Howard was poorly served here. Perhaps the casting of a George Clooney type might have helped. We needed to see the power and complexity. 7 out of 10 for such a big attempt to diminish such a huge character.