An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was Warren Beatty’s comeback feature, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, eventually, it took me much longer than I expected to see the damned thing (almost 10 years) and, to be honest, I wish it would have been more worth waiting for so long. Apparently, it was a dream project for Beatty who wanted to make a movie about Howard Hughes already back in the 70’s but, unfortunately, even though Hugues was a fascinating man and therefore there was tons of potential, I’m afraid he didn’t nail it though. Of course, there is the issue that Scorsese already came up with a great movie about the guy 10 years before that and, to make things worse, the damned thing was quite amazing (even though it might be a controversial opinion, ‘The Aviator’ is probably my favorite movie he made with DiCaprio). However, I don’t think it was the issue here. Indeed, Beatty focused only on the final years of Hugues so the approach was really different than Scorsese’s movie and it was also a bold move. At the time, all the glory and glamor of his hectic life was pretty much gone and the twilight years of his life were really dark but it was still some fascinating material. Unfortunately, for some reason, instead of focusing on Hughes, they decided to focus on one of his drivers and on one of the actresses who were under contract with his film studio but it was just so misguided. Sure, they ended up falling in love but, seriously, who cares about them and their generic infatuation? Were they supposed to show that, in spite of being a total wack job, Hugues was still a huge inspiration? Well, it didn’t work and, to make things worse, I don’t think the characters actually made much sense. Indeed, they were both devout Christians and, above all, they seemed to be fairly bright so why on Earth would they stick around in such an obvious toxic environment? The last issue I had was also that Warren Beatty was actually rather weak playing Howard Hughes. I mean, it was a great character, especially at this stage in his life but it required a really great actor. Basically, the way Beatty approached the character was by playing him like as some unpredictable goofball and then he toned it down each time it was needed by the plot which, in my opinion, deprived the character of any actual depth. Anyway, to conclude, I think my rating was actually rather generous, I guess it is still worth a look but there is no doubt that it could and/or should have been so much better. 

6/10