Under Mira Nair’s direction, Amelia is pretty enough to look at, but its lack of dramatic momentum and episodic nature are deficits the film’s handsome production values can’t overcome. As a biopic, Amelia falls short in two critical areas: It fails to sufficiently illuminate its protagonist, and it is unable to convey the weight of her accomplishments. For this, the script by Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan must also shoulder a considerable part of the blame. Perhaps because the writers seem to take for granted that their story has an automatically compelling subject at its center, they eschew illumination for melodrama. As a result, its title character remains a rather opaque figure dutifully hitting her marks in the story of her life — or, more accurately, its final 10 years.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.