The Aeronauts

In a truly bizarre twist, the makers of The Aeronauts (2019) decided to tell the story about an 1862 hot-air balloon flight by scientsts James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell by dumping Coxwell and replacing him with a fictional female character. The resulting rewrite of history makes no sense at all and reduces what might have been an interesting story to rubbish. What we're left with is a bowdlerized historical event rendered in CGI to the max. Eddie Redmayne plays the real-life James Glaisher while Felicity Jones plays the fictional Amelia Rennes. The Victoran-Era story that we're left with is preposterous.

To add insult to injury, Jones' character is one of the most annoying females I've seen in a film in a long time ... well since BOOKSMART. Totally out of character for the Victorian Era, this shrieking harpy is loud and pushy and rude. Redmayne pretty much walks through his part. His parents, played by Tom Courtenay and Anne Reid, are way too old for their roles.

Another gripe is the racial parade of Blacks and Asians all done up in the Victorian finery. So there's another PC push that is not historically accurate, plus Redmayne's friend/assistant is Indian. Victorian England was not that culturally fluid.

Probably 90% of the film is dominated by CGI and green screen technologies that always seem to have that flat, unnatural look. And isn't it amazing how Jones can hang on to icy, frozen ropes and dangle in mid air. Total bosh!