An unfortunate disappointment.

Rating: 3/10 (3 January 2005)

There is several related but distinctive ways to present a life history. Here are just five of them:
1. Fiction: As in Jack London's autobiographical, "Martin Eden." This calls for the engagement of story elements where a protagonist is introduced, conflict results from his or her personality and life choices and the conflict is resolved with the effect of having the character changed.
2. Panorama: As in David Lean's unforgettable "Lawrence of Arabia" where the subject becomes the pivotal instrument of a historical event and epic magnitude is attained.
3. Pageant: As in Richard Attenborough's memorable Gandhi where the subject actually creates history within the presentation of a story and that story once again reaches epic importance.
4. Chronicle: As in Sunrise at Campobello, the story Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or The Spirit of St. Louis, on the Charles Lindbergh flight.
5. Tabloid: Where a laundry list of yellow press reportage is woven into continuity.
Aviator is the last of these. Here is a by-the-numbers presentation of tabloid headline stories fleshed into sometimes interesting dialogue but never revealing the depths of the man except for one odd, unexplored scene from his childhood with his mother. Nor does the film adequately present Hughes' remarkable influence on the history of aviation. Instead it's tossed off in a casual style except for the depiction of some of his dramatic adventures in aviation while his early career in Hollywood is presented as an exaggerated, frenzied comic strip.
Another curiosity, not a single one of the selected actors in the film bears the slightest resemblance to the celebrity being played. For example, Jean Harlow is played by an ethnic, Mediterranean type of woman in what looks like a tight, cheap blonde wig instead of the airy, blousy colorless hair which was Lombard's trademark. Cate Blanchett does a fine job at emulating the Kate Hepburn voice but has none of her fine, angular facial features. The worst choice was Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner, nowhere close.
The physical miscastings are topped by Leonardo DiCaprio who, God bless him, works his little heart out playing Hughes but selling us his Oogie Pringle, Walter Denton teen, nasal soprano voice for Hughes' baritone is challenging. This mismatch is compounded especially for those of us who can still recall the mature, handsome face of Howard Hughes and can contrast it with DiCaprio's still unlined Kewpie appearance.
Perhaps the most irritating part of this picture is in its distortion of Howard Hughes' years where we see, for example, his extreme and radical mental deterioration begin before his famous senate hearings of 1947 which was not the case. My own original and primary research with a long time friend who lived in Vegas and knew Hughes in his final years said to me emphatically that he was not the bizarre psycho with long fingernails and matted hair described in the media back then.
In summary, the film is devoid of meaning and strangely hollow. It is conversely not without some entertainment value. It has some marvelous performances in it, especially that of Alan Alda as Senator Ralph Owen Brewster. However, as a biopic of Howard Hughes I can't recommend it