At times, it seems like the screenplay for "Amelia" has been sitting on a dusty shelf since the day the pioneer's plane disappeared in 1937. Or maybe the decade after.

For a movie about a passionate adventuress, "Amelia" is conventional and oddly tame. Its PG rating seems to hamstring certain aspects of the story regarding Amelia Earhart's love life and the screenplay conveniently omits details about her husband's first wife and children.

It also suffers from the "Valkyrie" syndrome: We know, sadly, how this is going to turn out. Earhart's silver-and-orange Lockheed L-10 Electra plane disappeared over the Western Pacific after she and navigator Fred Noonan logged 22,000 miles of flying.

"Amelia," directed by Mira Nair, opens on June 1, 1937, the day Earhart (Hilary Swank) takes off from Miami on an around-the-world flight.

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'Amelia'

2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

• Starring: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere.
• Rating: PG for some sensuality, language, thematic elements and smoking.
• Web site: www.foxsearchlight.com/amelia/

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It quickly spins back to 1928 New York when Earhart meets master promoter, publisher and future husband George P. Putnam (Richard Gere). He is recruiting a woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as a back-seat passenger and to pen a book about the landmark experience.

"I give the orders, you take them," he says, in the days before their relationship becomes personal as well as professional. The triumphant trip leads to a ticker-tape parade, book, lecture circuit fetching $500 a week ($6,250 in today's dollars) and crush of celebrity.

But Earhart wants to literally and figuratively be in the pilot's seat, telling a young admirer, "Don't let anyone turn you around." After some initial reluctance, she agrees to marry Putnam and continues to rack up aviation achievements before attempting the around-the-world flight.

Two-time Oscar winner Swank was born to play Amelia. Although she doesn't have the same gap between her front teeth, the actress shares the long-legged, slender build and short haircut although it's more flattering and glamorous on her. She also gives her voice a soft, Midwestern accent, befitting Earhart's Kansas roots.

Although Putnam declares, "This is America, I am obligated to make as much money as I can," he is cast as a faithful supporter of Amelia who is jealous of her relationship with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor).

He is a former star athlete who taught aeronautics at West Point, was married and fathered his now-famous son, Gore Vidal, and by all accounts had an affair with Earhart.

"Amelia" only hints at their infidelity -- the pair are shown passionately kissing in an elevator -- and makes no mention of Amelia's friendship with Putnam's wife, who engaged in some scandalous affairs of her own. In real life, Putnam was a decade older than Swank rather than the 25 years here.

Vidal, who became head of the national Bureau of Air Commerce, almost is reduced to a drive-by character. Cherry Jones, however, makes the most of an extended cameo as Eleanor Roosevelt, unflattering teeth and all, and Christopher Eccleston's Noonan has the ring of a real person.

"Amelia," written by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan based on the books "East to the Dawn" and "The Sound of Wings," feels sanitized and safe when it should leave you enlightened, exhilarated, breathless and heartbroken.

Some of the dialogue sounds pre-packaged, as with "What if it's not something I need to show the world? What if it's something I have to show me?"

Earhart's instant celebrity might have made a bigger impact had the story given us a taste of Earhart's previous jobs -- tutoring blind students in trigonometry, teaching English to foreigners, working as a nurse-companion in a private hospital for mentally ill patients and as a part-time social worker. That's according to a new, enlightening book called "Amelia Earhart: The Thrill of It" by Susan Wels.

To be sure, some of the flying sequences are beautiful and the story dramatizes how a series of small decisions or mistakes could have led to the plane ditching in the ocean rather than making a planned refueling stop on tiny Howland Island.

In the end, "Amelia" cannot maintain airspeed because it's too preoccupied with romanticizing an icon and a marriage instead of giving us a flesh-and-blood woman going against society's headwinds.

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