Review – The Aviator

All by himself, Howard Hughes almost automatically makes for the subject of an interesting movie. But Martin Scorsese appears to be doing almost everything he can to avoid pulling it off. For openers, he seems to have lost a good deal of his once-impressive sense of timing. As a result, many sequences that I’m sure were intended as a glimpse into Hughes’s manias instead come across as little more than annoying. Further, much of the casting here is all wrong. Leonardo DiCaprio does an acceptable job as the young, enthusiastic protagonist, but by the time 20 years and the strain of mental illness are supposed to have taken their toll on him, the actor no longer has the range to pull it off. And don’t even get me started on Kate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn. Overall this is a long, expensive production that isn’t bad but could have been a lot better than it was. Mildly amusing