Scorsese lost it

Rating: 1/10 (27 December 2004)

I am a genuine lover of films. I write this not to be hateful but to give my honest opinion about a film that is getting hyped by critics but that left me and my friends baffled. Quite frankly, I can't remember a film I despised so much as THE AVIATOR, a beautifully photographed leaden piece of metal with no more heart than a piece of left over scrap metal from the Spruce Goose. Howard Hughes is an admittedly difficult subject matter for a film (perhaps this is why so many announced film projects about the eccentric billionaire have gone by the way side) -- Peculiar to a fault, Scorsese fails to make Hughes sympathetic or understandable to audiences he expect to go on a three hour journey into Hughes madness (which is pretty much the same in the third scene in the film as it is in the last.) DiCaprio does his best, but the character of Hughes has nowhere to go. So he's rich and eccentric and troubled. Why should we care if we can't sympathize or at least empathize? And we are really excepted to believe his life long phobias are the result of a single conversation with his creepy mother during a bath?
The lone bright spot in this film is Cate Blanchett who manages to turn in a richly textured performance of Katherine Hepburn. But her presence ain't worth the boredom you have to wade through the other 2 hours and 45 minutes she's not on film. This is a film critics seem to love, and I'm no critic. But I know when a film leaves me bolting for the exit at the end.
If the site of naked, half mad Howard Hughes lining up rows upon rows of milk bottles filled with urine is your idea of a good time, THE AVIATOR is the film for you.