If a generation of girls grows up without hearing the word "tomboy" used as an insult, it's partly thanks to Hilary Swank, who has won two Oscars for portraying gender-role rebels. For those girls' grandmothers, a heroic role model was Amelia Earhart, the Midwestern girl who became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

In the biopic "Amelia," the actress and the aviatrix are a match made in heaven, but surrounding the soaring performance is a movie that's mostly earthbound.

The mix of rapture and realism does produce some sparks. "Amelia" has an astute sense of the publicity apparatus that turned a gawky girl from Atchison, Kan., into a global celebrity.

In 1928, a year after Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic, New York publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere) seeks a qualified young woman to duplicate the feat. Apprentice pilot Earhart (Swank) convinces him that she's got the necessary skills and courage. Although she literally takes a back seat to a male pilot and navigator, the successful flight from Newfoundland to Wales earns her a ticker-tape parade.

As Earhart tours the country, enlisting investors and competitors for new challenges, Putnam uses her to test his theories on something called public relations, and eventually he proposes matrimony as a strategic alliance. Although Earhart insists she's a "vagabond of the air," she agrees to a trial marriage if it doesn't entail obedience.

That loophole opens the door for another suitor, a flight instructor named Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) with a star-struck son named Gore. (Yes, that Gore Vidal.)

Although it illustrates Earhart's independence, the love triangle is sketchily executed. Director Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding") seems more engaged by the critique of commercialism — a montage of product endorsements is worthy of Busby Berkeley — and celebrating the sensation of flight. As Putnam and/or Vidal fret below, Earhart soars over scenic wonders.

Although "Amelia" is too conventionally constructed to attain the heights of Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," the cinematography and Depression-era props are splendid. Swank, of course, is too.

And the last segment of the film, in which the ill-fated Earhart and an emotionally scarred navigator named Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston) hopscotch across the Southern Hemisphere, is heartbreaking. But since it isn't tethered to a suspenseful ending, there's no reason why "Amelia" shouldn't have aimed for the stars.