DON'T TELL ME WHAT ISN'T POSSIBLE!!!

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2001)

**This review is shipped by weight, not by volume. Some spoilers may have occurred during writing.**
At one point or another, in talking about a movie, we've all either heard or said that the romantic sub-plot seemed tacked on. Never before has a romance been so obviously tacked on as it was with this film. Just to give an idea as to how cheesy the romance is; there is actually a scene where Ben Affleck's character is on a train, leaving for England, and Kate Beckinsale's character is running alongside the train saying goodbye.
Now to say that the dialogue and the story is sappy and insulting is redundant. Anyone can write a bad script. But with this film, even the cinematography is cheesy. Note to Michael Bay: Just because you can move the camera, doesn't mean you should. Even the simplest of scenes, containing nothing more than "meaningful" exchanges between characters, are made up of sweeping camera angles that just give your heart strings a nice tug.
As for the title of this review; when you have a scene in your movie where, for dramatic purposes, a wheelchair bound character (FDR) stands up, you are doing nothing more than begging critics to dump on your movie. Roland Emmerich followed up his really bad disaster movie (Godzilla) with a really bad historical epic (The Patriot). Now Michael Bay is following suit with his contributions to both genres (Armageddon & Pearl Harbor). So I'm sure we can expect really bad children's movies coming from both of them soon.
The fact that directors who show a little proficiency in directing action sequences feel the need to direct the rest of a movie is beyond me. Stick to what you're good at!!