Absolutely Brilliant!

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This film has been and will continue to be compared to "The Aviator" - a film that frankly bored me. "The Amazing Howard Hughes" looked and felt real because it focused upon Hughes as a real life flesh and blood man and used few if any cinematic tricks. Tommy Lee Jones made a very credible Howard Hughes from his physique down to his accent.I am interested by the actual business dealings of Hughes and those around him rather than his marriages and affairs. Afterall, there have been many playboy millionaires in America's history but only one Howard Hughes. It wasn't the romances that made Hughes particularly interesting and this film didn't focus on them in the way "The Aviator did. For me, this was a positive.

While "The Amazing Howard Hughes" lacks the great CGI and beautiful polish of the later Hughes biopic "The Aviator", it is a terrific film--and better in some ways. Unlike "The Aviator", "The Amazing Howard Hughes" gives a much more complete account of the billionaire's life. While it fails to did in as much psychological depth as the later film and doesn't build the same sense of sadness, it is a very full portrait. While both films skip most of his childhood (and this is a shame), this made for TV movie goes from his early career through his final years--living as an insane recluse. In the process, Tommy Lee Jones did a wonderful job--looking and sounding much like the man he was portraying. Overall, a great look at the life of Hughes and one of the best made for TV films of the 1970s. And, not surprisingly, it helped to launch Jones' career to much greater heights. Well worth seeing.

After Scorsese and DiCaprio made the worthwhile "Aviator" it is with regret that this elaborate TV masterpiece is almost forgotten: It dares to portrait almost the whole life of Howard Hughes with far greater detail than Aviator, which certainly is more challenging for the viewer and at the cost of story telling, however after that you have a far better impression about the illustrious and manic personality of the first billionaire of the new age. The early dead of his parents, the apocalyptic end of Hughes, isolated and alone in various Hotels spread over the world, suffering from manias and letting hair and nails grow to the floor levels only surrounded by his Mormon servants is authentic and reported in biographies such as the Barlett/Steele standard and I cannot understand why DiCaprio/Scorsese thought they could tell the story about Hughes without several decades of his life. The bookkeeper character Noah Dietrich is at least given the importance he deserved and I assume the lack of flamboyance was the reason of cutting him out the Scorsese movie (not Rileys fault). Tommy Lee Jones delivers the best performance I have seen from him, hopefully the movie will be available online or on DVD somewhere soon.

This film is outstanding on all levels covered all of Hughes' life which is surprising for a t.v. movie.Don't ever look for any movie t.v. or not to tell the full story of anyones life.This film was done at a time when there was actually(URGH)truth and balance in media.I saw this movie with the limited opinion that he was just some nut case and came away with the opinion that he was an extraordinary complicated man who let his ego get the better of him.There is a message in this film for all of us and that is not to ignore your problems or difficulties.I feel sorry for younger people who will never get the chance to see a biopic that would tell a persons story as accurately as they could.At least not one that was made in this country and certainly not one that was done by Americans.