The Aviator is a classic biopic – on a very large scale. Tons of sets, tons of actors, tons of costumes and tons of footage. The Aviator is the classic Oscar seeker, doing everything on the largest scale possible. It amounts to a fairly entertaining watch visually.

But it’s still just your classic biopic. As is standard, we have a historical character, in this case Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is important for having done something great, in this case, having forwarded the airline industry by pushing newer and better airplanes. The character is also “interesting” because inevitably there are problems in his personal life. In Hughes case, this involves the early death of his parents and his subsequent early inheritance of a fortune, his aggressive personality, his escapades with various movie stars, most notably Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchette), and most significantly, his struggle with a sever case of obsessive compulsive disorder.

As the film wanes on, Hughes’ career becomes less and less of the primary subject and the growing OCD become more and more a factor. He goes from merely washing his hands too much to eventually locking himself naked in a room for a long period of time. DiCaprio performs the difficult task adequately, but the film never makes anything of it. In the end, it is nothing but a “trial” that some guy in history dealt with. That is not interesting.

That’s not to say that the film as a whole is without interest. Hughes is very generally an engaging character as one who is willing to sacrifice all else in order to realize a vision that few others share. More fun than Hughes is Katherine Hepburn, particularly Blachette’s performance of her. It seemed a bit much, but then maybe that’s the way Hepburn really was, I don’t know. In any case, it was fun to watch.

In the end, The Aviator struggles with the classic biopic problem. The life of the person in question is mildly interesting, and one that would certainly warrant a “they should make a movie out of that” type comment. But it seems like these types of stories are for the small screen, during the day. Primarily because they just aren’t good enough as stories to stand up to the other big screen entries. Though The Aviator certainly isn’t up there with film’s best, Scorsese’s flies the biopic into grandiose enough skies that it’s worthy of the big screen.

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