Over Produced Junk

Rating: 3/10 (27 July 2005)

What in the world happened to Martin Scorsese? Here is the creator of Dog Day Afternoon and Wise Guys, a man considered one of the best of the 1970's Golden Age of Film, but film by film his stuff gets more over produced, less insightful, and more expensive. I saw it coming with Gangs of New York, but somebody keep Leonardo DiCaprio away from this guy. They are awful together and The Aviator is one big expensive, good-looking bore without a soul.
In a documentary on Neo-Realism, Italian Post War Cinema, Scorsese claims he started with storyboards as a child, a comic book look that is produced giving the director a visualization of what the film will look like. The trouble with The Aviator, it looks like a storyboard. The replicas and animation of Hugh's weird airplanes almost steal the show, because they are the only interesting thing to look at on screen. Howard Hughes is never fleshed out. At least Kinsey, a recent bio flick tried to show why Kinsey was what he was, but DiCaprio's Hugh's is some kind of freak because his mother talked about diseases while he bathed. There's not enough there Martin. The bulk of the film shows a very young actor with no physical resemblance to Howard Hughes talking big time business and avionics without any back-story on how he became so brilliant out of the crib? The women in Hugh's life are trotted out one by one. He's a cocky guy putting his hand under a cigarette flappers skirt, a rich boy lover for Kathryn Hepburn (She doesn't come off too swell in this version), and Ava Gardner (No wonder Sinatra and Artie Shaw had it easy with this chick after the money-bags geekdom of Hughes). None of these gals are fleshed out other than Hollywood publicity shrek.
Don't bother with this one.