Now Available on DVD: Adam and Amelia

In the past couple of weeks, there has been a flood of movies that have been released on DVD. I have to admit that this is one of my favorite months of the year when all of the movies that I wouldn't pay $10.50 for, come out on DVD and I only have to spring for $5! Sadly, I should not have even spent the $5 on some of these films.

I was excited about Adam because I thought that it would be a new take on the old formulaic plot of boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Nope. Same formula, different characters. Adam, the main character, has Asperger's Syndrome which causes him to make inappropriate statements and seem self-absorbed. When a woman named Beth moves into the apartment below his, she is suddenly taken with his awkwardness and finds his quirks endearing. The couple go through their ups and downs, as most romantic comedy couples do, until their relationship breaks due to scandal in Beth's family and Adam's inability to be supportive. Though the interactions between Beth and Adam can be adorable at times, they do not seem to have the spark that I had hoped for. In addition, the ending did not seem to fit with the development of the characters which left me feeling dissatisfied. I would have to say that the saving point of the movie is Peter Gallagher who plays Beth's aristocratic (and shady) father. Yet, when a movie's saving grace is Peter Gallagher...you have to be suspicious. Overall, it was a dud.

Next on my queue was Amelia with Academy Award Winner Hilary Swank and Richard Gere. If there is a movie that could be worse than Adam...this is it! Though no one should be surprised because any movie that has Richard Gere is bound to make you want to cringe. Being that most people are familiar with Amelia Earhart's story, the director decided to put the plot in a blender and shoot the audience through time. This would not have been so frustrating if the scenes were longer than a couple of minutes (which they were not!). Just as the audience felt that they were settling into a scene, the director would not only change to another but would switch to a completely different decade. Sadly, there was very little background into Amelia's childhood or upbringing which made her gusto and bravado seem unwarranted. However, Hilary Swank did an incredible job playing the part. I have to say that had the movie been a one woman show of Hilary Swank playing Amelia, I would have wept with joy! She really nailed the persona and was able to show the multiple sides of Amelia's personality. Still, the director chose to focus more on the romance between Amelia and her husband which was dull not to mention that Swank and Gere have no chemistry. The movie could have been slightly improved if the director had merely decided to run the plot chronologically instead of chopped up which left the viewers saying "wait...is this the flight where she dies? wait....was that the flight where she dies?". Overall, a dud.

-DLP