(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
— David Hudson, IFC.com
The script, performances, and, most of all, the production values,2 of this film fluff, mousse, and blow-dry the legend of Howard Hughes in a manner quite similar to recent treatments of Ed
Wood and Andy Kauffman. He's just a kid, damn it, just a big, sweet kid, with more guts than all of you phonies put together! No wonder you had to destroy him!
Cate Blanchett has a good time as Katherine Hepburn (right), playing her as an outright dyke6 who inexplicably prefers screwing men.7 She has the "hero's best friend" role typically assigned gays in biopics, giving her Howard all kinds of good advice — not hard, because she's obviously read the script. Kate Beckinsale appears as Ava Gardner, dropping in from Planet Noir as the femme fatale who saves your ass instead of skinning it.8 A gorgeous, fucked-up hero, two strong women, and one crotch-grabbing mom — definitely a balanced picture, definitely "right" for the oughties.
1. Fat chance! Even when he was as skinny as Leo, Orson had more ego in his little finger than both Marty and Leo put together.
2. Scorsese seems to be channeling Vincente Minnelli in one ear and Douglas Sirk in the other. Queer theorists will be living off this film for decades. Besides, you get to look at Leo in tight pants for three hours. Who could ask for anything more?
3. Scarface (1932) is an exception to this crass and sweeping generalization, thanks to Paul Muni's over-the-top performance in the title role, along with plenty of pre-Code babosity from Ann Dvorak and Karen Morley.
4. Howard's WWII spy plane, heavily featured in the film, wasn't delivered to the government until almost a year after the war was over. German fighters were outperforming it in 1944. The giant Hercules cargo plane, the "Spruce Goose," grossly underpowered and totally impractical, did not fly nearly as high as we are shown. (Hughes got it seventy feet off the water, covering a total distance in the air of less than a mile. And it only flew once.)
5. What was Howard Hughes really like? There are half a dozen biographies available, each one trashier than the last. If it was tacky, Howard did it, sometime or other.
6. According to Charles Higham's Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, Hughes was himself bisexual, bedding both Randolph Scott and Cary Grant, among others. But according to Howard Hughes: The Untold Story, by Peter Brown and Pat Broeska, Howard and Cary were just very good friends, for a very long time.
7. Chicks weren't butch enough for her, apparently.
8. Beckinsale doesn't make nearly the impression Blanchett does, both because she doesn't get enough lines and because it's hard to tell her apart from her bimbo competition (Kelli Garner as "Faith Domergue").
