Amelia

The road to good movies is paved with bad movies. Amelia (Hillary Swank a dead ringer for the original) attempts to bring big romantic sweep to the life of Amelia Earhart. A few scenes ring with authentic movie making fervor but most of the time production values hide a vacuous story.
On one hand you want a movie to be about what you think it should be about. It's not Amelia's fault that it doesn't cover the many versions of her demise. For instance, in the 60s a book was published that looked at inconsistencies in the aftermath of Earhart's disappearance at sea. The book purported that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan, on their historical 1937 airplane flight around the world, were executed by the Japanese as spies after they crash landed in an uncharted region of the Pacific Ocean.
I could go with director Mira Nair's version of events but it's too choppy, the narrative doesn't flow. Nair views Earhart as a pioneer of women's rights who eventually married publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere, very ineffective) and also had a dalliance with aviator and West Point professor Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor also underutilized). Minor characters or plot lines are introduced and lost. We meet and greet Vidal, Earhart even has a make out session with him on an elevator, but after a while he disappears just as does another character, a teen Earhart want-to-be aviatrix who competes against Earhart at airplane festivals and likewise never reappears after the first act.
One of the most annoying of Nair's concessions to anachronistic appeal has Swank/Earhart doing celebrity endorsements for various products and shooting it with the glee of a Busby Berkeley spectacle. The main story has Earhart circling the globe with Noonan while her past exploits (Atlantic flights, love affairs, meeting other famous people) are seen in flashback. After a long flight to limited recognition Amelia will best be remembered for Swank's version of a Kansas accent.