It's unfortunate that we can't just talk about Amelia as a bad movie. As another unwieldy, under-characterized, over-cliched biopic trying to combine legend and humanity into one half-baked, generic panini, the kind made, inevitably, with chicken, crummy cheese and a few overwhelming hunks of roasted pepper. But when Amelia fails, it's an indictment of women's movie, of "older women's movies" (that's us ape-leaders over the magic 25) and of those with "strong female characters."

Of course, Amelia's part of a larger trend, which leads to inevitable analysis. As the NYT puts it, "For actresses, it is no longer enough to be young and beautiful onscreen, they have to be dead and famous, too - one of history's immortals." Amelia, Coco, Victoria - these are the Good Roles now, nevermind that biopics of either sex are rarely showcases for much other than scenery-chewing. (Maybe that's why a film like The Queen feels as revelatory as it did.) The WaPo piece that Hortense referenced this weekend said this:

The historical drama, about the pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart, represents a major risk in Hollywood, where studio executives have been increasingly chary of making movies about strong women. If "Amelia" earns respectable receipts, chances are it will be dismissed as a lucky break. If it fails, it will be cited as yet more proof that strong female protagonists are box office poison.

Here's something that bothers me: people seem to misunderstand what a "strong female character" is. They think it means flying planes or, James Cameron-style, wielding guns (both kinds.) Call it the "Demi Moore syndrome" in which she seemed to feel shaving her head or sexually harassing male characters functioned as acts of reclamation. "Strong women" are box-office poison? How about "underwritten characters showing they're strong by engaging in heavy-handed and essentially masculine antics?" Think about it: "strength" is defined narrowly as "defying femininity" and it's reductive and it's boring. (Alternatively, SFC's are occasionally allowed to be battered by love and tragedy and emerge singing or otherwise triumphant.) As the superbly-named Sady Doyle sagely puts it, "No matter how much you like strong female characters, this isn't interesting. And I'm reluctant to see any movie that looks this predictable and obvious out of some kind of womanly obligation. "Strength" can be just as bland as anything else – and just as limiting."

Look, no one's denying Amelia Earhart's accomplishments nor her place in history - rather, the inevitable interpretation. As the Los Angeles Times puts it, "The pilot, perhaps the most famous woman in the world in the early 1930s, has become for many a kind of two-dimensional pop-up icon, a name branded on public works and postage stamps — vaunted for her androgynous style, her lanky figure invariably adorned in breeches and a silk shirt, her hair cropped short. It's not for nothing that the Gap and Apple recycled her image for ad campaigns in the 1990s." And the film doesn't challenge that. Amelia was a crummy movie, no worse than any sweeping biographical epic. I'd forgotten it ten minutes after walking out of the theatre. But the consequences for its failure are, apparently, far more serious: it means "strong women" don't sell. Well, if that means an end to "strong women" as Hollywood defines it, frankly, I don't think that's such a tragedy. Sadly, what it probably in fact means is more Julie, less Julia. And it's really sad that, nowadays, a "women's movie" can't suck in a vacuum.

Dissecting Amelia [WomenandHollywood]
Now Starring at the Movies: Famous Dead Women] [New York Times]
Making A Private Woman Public For 'Amelia' [Los Angeles Times]
Women & Film [Washington Post]

Strong Women, Weak Box Office [Salon]
Related: Will Strong Female Characters Ever Make A Comeback On The Big Screen?

Hornaday argues that Amelia's box office results will essentially be a failure either way: "If 'Amelia' earns respectable receipts," Hornaday writes, "chances are it will be dismissed as a lucky break. If it fails, it will be cited as yet more proof that strong female protagonists are box office poison."

While fluffy romantic comedies and films based on television shows are still successful, due to excellent cross-promotion, branding, and the offer of escapism, Hornaday still wonders: "In an era when women in movies fall along a spectrum defined by Hannah Montana and 'Twilight' on one end and 'Sex and the City' and 'Mamma Mia!' on the other, where are the screen heroines of yesteryear, who could be strong, serious and sexy?"

She answers her own question later in the piece, conceding that television has become the home for dramas and the actresses who shine in them: Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Kyra Sedgwick, Mary-Louise Parker, and Sally Field, just to name a few, have found success on the small screen, starring in quality shows that provide them with a chance to play something other than "someone's mom," or "woman who stands looking shocked while giant robots attack the earth."

The shift of dramas from film to television, and the failture of Hollywood to properly market to women are at the heart of Hornaday's piece, and judging by the slightly depressing insights she receives from Hollywood insiders, it doesn't look like dramas are going to shift back to the silver screen anytime soon. Big budget blockbusters, superhero films, and bromance comedies are the money makers, and Hollywood is eager to cash in while it can. A film like Amelia, unfortunately, isn't going to be the turn around needed to push strong female characters back onto the big screen, and part of the reason, according to the critics, anyway, is that the movie just isn't that good.

Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com makes an interesting argument in Hornaday's piece, noting that women prefer films about shoes and vampires as they provide an excuse for a "Girl's Night Out" of sorts; silly, somewhat mindless entertainment that includes two hours of social bonding time with the ticket price. He has a point, I suppose, though one wishes it didn't take sparkly vampires or women waxing poetic about handbags and idiotic boyfriends in order to get women interested in seeing films together. It all comes back to escapism, I suppose; as Dergarabedian notes in a somewhat cringe-worthy quote: "It's almost as if in real life, women want to be empowered and in control, but on-screen they seem to like the old-fashioned damsel-in-distress, love-struck female."

I'll admit that I don't go to the movies as often as I used to; I typically go for an "event" film or for a comedy, as it's hard, at times, to justify dropping $10 on a ticket to a mediocre film that will most likely be out on DVD three weeks later. The loss of strong females on the big screen has turned movies, for me, anyway, into pure escapism: I go to laugh or to watch superheroes run around. Television, on the other hand, is where I turn for quality dramas; I'd much rather stay in on a Sunday night and watch Mad Men than drop ten bucks on the latest hooker-victim-doormat flick playing down the street.

I feel simultaneously guilty and frustrated by this: I should be spending more money in support of films that feature strong women as leads, but at the same time, those films are hard to find. I'm not sure I agree with Dergarabedian's claim that women are looking for "the old-fashioned damsel-in-distress," as much as they are, perhaps, looking for a happy ending to offset the often gloomy realities of the world. I suppose the only silver lining at this point is that those of us who leave the theater in search of something more than "happily ever after," can easily find it waiting for us at home, on our television sets.

With Strong Female Characters, Hollywood Suffers From A Fear Of Failure [WashingtonPost]

Earlier: Amelia: "The Entire Movie Is A Failure To Communicate"

Amelia, which opens today, was directed by Mira Nair and adapted from two Earhart biographies, Susan Butler's East to the Dawn and Mary S. Lovell's The Sound of Wings. But according to critics, it seems the screenwriters went to great lengths to purge the film of many of the more interesting aspects of her unusual life, and instead focused on her marriage to publishing magnate George P. Putnam (Richard Gere). The film cuts back and forth between Earhart (Hilary Swank) in the cockpit during her doomed final flight, and the decade preceding it, during which she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and an international celebrity.

Critics say that while Swank captures Earhart's physicality, she isn't given very good dialogue to work with. The script smooths over the many controversies surrounding her life, including her open marriage to Putnam, her rumored bisexuality, and whether or not she was a spy. Though the film delves into the love triangle between Earhart, Putnam and Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), her affair with Vidal only amounts to one fairly chaste kiss in an elevator. As one critic puts it, the film is less exciting than a History Channel documentary.

NPR

The movie is imprisoned in safety. The script by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan makes gestures in the right direction. It touches on the most modern aspect of Earhart's story: that from the get-go the image of this would-be free spirit was marketed like crazy. Putnam functioned as Earhart's Madison Avenue Svengali, although the filmmakers can't bring themselves to condemn him. He's a tender father/lover who just happens to want Amelia to make money. This is America, he keeps reminding her, and it's dollars that allow her to fly. But Amelia boasts some of the most horrific examples of biopic dialogue I've ever heard. When Amelia can't decide what to do about her adulterous love for Gene Vidal, played by Ewan McGregor, he says, "Just ask yourself," and Amelia says - "I'm not sure who that is anymore."

Hollywood Reporter

Freckle-faced, prairie-voiced and fiercely independent, Hilary Swank's depiction of aviator Amelia Earhart in Mira Nair's biographical film Amelia is of a high order. It ranks with recent real-life portrayals of Ray Charles by Jamie Foxx and Truman Capote by Philip Seymour Hoffman and could be similarly awards-bound.

The Chicago Sun-Times

I'm not suggesting that Mira Nair and her writers, Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, should have invented anything for Amelia. It is right that they resisted any temptation. It's just that there's a certain lack of drama in a generally happy life... "Amelia" is a perfectly sound biopic, well directed and acted, about an admirable woman. It confirmed for me Earhart's courage — not only in flying, but in insisting on living her life outside the conventions of her time for well-behaved females.

The Boston Globe

On the surface, the film appears to be a dispiriting awards-season white elephant, a triumph of production design, period costumes, and hollow bio-drama. The movie's trailer adds to the sense of déjà vu: Is this a sequel to Out of Africa, or a gender-bending remake of The Aviator, or what? Yet inside Amelia is a sharp idea struggling to get out: How does a woman marketed to the public as a star turn herself back into a human being? And at what cost? It's a question for our times, and the one novelty of Mira Nair's film is that it sets the conundrum in an earlier era, when celebrity branding wasn't yet a national way of life... The film's actual climax may have come earlier and more quietly, when Earhart is asked by a reporter, "Are you a better celebrity than a pilot?'' She doesn't come up with a convincing answer and neither does the movie. It asks the question, though, and that's a start.

Reel Views

Mira Nair's Amelia is a by-the-book bio-pic. By following the template, it's as safe and straightforward as one could possibly get, without narrative flourishes and with minimal exaggeration to satisfy Hollywood's appetite for fictionalization. That's not bad, but it's not necessarily good, either. Amelia Earhart led an active and interesting enough life that a simple re-telling of events works to a degree. It helps that Hilary Swank looks and acts the part and that Nair's style never gets in the way of the story. While this may not be the definitive Earhart biography, Amelia is watchable.

USA Today

Amelia's narrative adheres to the standard biopic formula. It limits its focus to about a decade, during which Earhart takes her first trans-Atlantic flight as a passenger/commander in 1928 to her disappearance in 1937. She is an intrinsically fascinating subject, but we don't get a sense of what propelled her to such courageous heights. Familiar platitudes, headline montages and voice-over pontificating bog down the story in superficiality.

Entertainment Weekly

Amelia is a frustratingly old-school, Hollywood-style, inspirational biopic about Amelia Earhart that doesn't trust a viewer's independent assessment of the famous woman pictured on the screen. The mystery we ought to be paying attention to is: What really happened on the legendary American aviator's final, fatal flight in 1937? But the question audiences are left with is this: How could so tradition-busting a role model have resulted in so square, stiff, and earthbound a movie? Why present such a modern woman in such a fusty format?

Salon

And Swank wears those clothes well: She gives a wonderful physical performance here. In fact, she tells us more about Earhart's life through her body language than she does in the dialogue. Swank's Earhart has a broad but slow-burning smile; her gait suggests a person who's gangly-graceful, generous and approachable — as Earhart, Swank's very limbs seem to call out, "Howdy!" But as perfect as Swank is for this role, the dialogue sounds stiff and overwritten as it emerges from her lips. Swank has strong, marvelous features, yet she's an actress of remarkable delicacy — that combination is part of what generally makes her so pleasurable to watch. But in Amelia she comes off as awkward and uncertain, as if she were trying to underplay the movie's too-obvious dialogue and not fully able to bring it into focus.

The Los Angeles Times

The sinewy strength and controlled aggression that Swank used to such good effect for her Oscar-winning roles in Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby is mostly diminished in Amelia by a poster-girl smile. So ever-present is that grin, whether in the cockpit, or a cocktail party or on the promotional circuit for everything from luggage to clothes that you worry it has forever lined Swank's face. But we get little of the woman behind the smile. Where is the steely force that drives grand ambition, the fears, the flaws?

The Washington Post

Look, nobody's asking for a miniseries here, but at times the movie feels more like a History Channel documentary — respectful to the point of reverential — than a rip-snorting yarn. And that's despite a scene where Earhart almost falls out of the plane while soaring over the Atlantic Ocean in what looks like an airborne tin can. Would that the film had taken as many risks. When it comes to some of the wild speculation that has arisen over the years about what happened to Earhart during that final flight, the movie doesn't even go out on a limb, opting instead for the sort of vague, open ending that, is historically safe and cinematically dull.

Variety

To say that Amelia never gets off the ground would be an understatement; it barely makes it out of the hangar. Handsomely mounted yet dismayingly superficial, Mira Nair's film offers snazzy aerial photography and inspirational platitudes in lieu of insight into Amelia Earhart's storied life and high-flying career. Prestigious packaging, led by Hilary Swank's gussied-up performance as the iconic aviatrix, portends friendly commercial skies for the Fox Searchlight release, at least initially. But critical disdain is unlikely to be countered by much audience enthusiasm, even among admirers of this kind of old-fashioned, star-powered bio-mush.

The A.V. Club

If Amelia has any value (which is a dubious proposition), it's as an object lesson in the follies of the conventional biopic, which puts mindless recapitulation of historical data above analysis or insight. The messy fascination of life is replaced by a schematic series of setups and payoffs. The second it's mentioned that Christopher Eccleston's navigator is a recovering alcoholic, it's clear that it's only a matter of time before he falls off the wagon at a pivotal moment. His lived-in performance is one of the film's only bright spots, though, along with Cherry Jones' fleeting turn as an impish Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Wall Street Journal

Ms. Swank, for her part, tries to inhabit a role with no living quarters. The writing is all about externals-what Amelia says rather than what she feels, what she looks like (glamorous, though she says she wears pants because she doesn't like her legs, and feminine, though there's one fleeting hint of more complex sexuality). Even the flying is about externals. Apart from admiring her new Electra and pushing an occasional throttle, the most famous female pilot in history displays no particular affinity for the gorgeous machinery at her disposal. The whole movie is a failure to communicate.

The New York Times

Alas, excesses of any pleasurable kind are absent from this exasperatingly dull production. The director Mira Nair, whose only qualification appears to be that she's a woman who has made others films about and with women (Mississippi Masala, Vanity Fair), keeps a tidy screen - it's all very neat and carefully scrubbed. I don't recall a single dented automobile or a fissure of real feeling etched into a face. Bathed in golden light, Amelia and G. P. are as pretty as a framed picture and as inert... With her rangy figure, Ms. Swank fills Earhart's coveralls and leather jackets nicely. But there's little to the performance other than the actress's natural earnestness and smiles so enormous, persistent and consuming that the rest of Earhart soon fades, much like the Cheshire Cat. As usual, Mr. Gere holds your attention with beauty and a screen presence so recessive that it creates its own gravitational pull. The actors don't make a persuasive fit, despite all their long stares and infernal smiling. (The movie is a more effective testament to the triumphs of American dentistry than to Earhart or aviation.) It's hard to imagine anyone, other than satirists, doing anything with the puerile, sometimes risible dialogue.

• Tilda Swinton, I Am Love: In this Italian film, Swinton will play a foreign "society matron" in Milan who falls for a young (hot) chef. The director says that the film is about "the irreparable consequences brought about by love in a high-bourgeois family." Verdict: While we love Swinton, the words "irreparable consequences" can only mean some victim elements.

• Virginia Madsen, Amelia: Botox spokeswoman and occasional actress, Madsen will co-star in this Amelia Earhart biopic playing Dorothy Pinney, the first wife of Richard Gere's character, George Putnam. Dorothy's husband eventually leaves her for Earhart (Hilary Swank) and the film focuses on their "rocky" relationship. Verdict: Hm, first wife of the husband of the film's title character? It's likely she'll be painted as a victim, a doormat or maybe a little of both!

• Emmanuelle Vaugier, Dolan's Cadillac: French actress Vaugier will play the female lead in this adaptation of Stephen King's short story of the same name. Vaugier's character is killed by a mob boss (Christian Slater) and her death is avenged by her husband (Wes Bentley). Verdict: Uh, murdered woman? Victim, victim, victim.

• Rose McGowan, Barbarella: McGowan will star in this re-make of the campy 1968 original starring Jane Fonda. In the original, Barbarella goes on a sexual journey to fight an evil man called Durand-Durand. Verdict: In the original, Fonda's sexual exploits are more comic than erotic. McGowan might get off (tee hee) easy with this one in terms of stereotypes, but we just hope she doesn't ruin classic!

• Moon Bloodgood, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins: Bloodgood, who starred in NBC's short-lived series Journeyman will play the female lead in this Terminator sequel, a "no-nonsense and battle-hardened" member of the resistance. Verdict: A no-nonsense character might seem okay (although it could be leaning into shrew territory) but a grade-A nobody playing an unnamed character as the "female lead" makes us think that the female characters found in this flick will probably be limited to 10 lines each.

SAG, Studios Feel The Pressure [Variety]
Tilda Swinton To Star In 'I Am Love' [Variety]
Virginia Madsen Added To 'Amelia' [Variety]
Christian Slater Drives 'Cadillac' [THR]
McGowan Dyes For 'Barbarella' Role [Variety]
'Terminator' Sequel Eyes Lead [THR]