What a great film!(Contains Spoilers!)

Rating: 3/10 (5 June 2001)

(Contains Spoilers!)
What a great film...if you want to show off what a 140 million dollar budget and a good special effects crew can get you. As far as its quality as a movie, it was a big, steaming pile of crap!
Let me break it down for you in basic terms. The soap opera storyline was insanely boring, stale, and fairly predictable, and the characters were flat. The actors brought nothing dynamic to their characters, either. The exception was the always-great Cuba Gooding, Jr., who was very underused. However, considering that African-Americans weren't allowed to play very major roles in the military during WWII, it is understandable. The special effects during the battle, however, were amazing, I will give them credit for that.
I imagine there was some sort of meeting between Bruckheimer and Bay about their next movie after Armageddon. They probably thought for all of five minutes, decided that to make more money, they need bullets and bombs, and quickly settled for WWII, and, more specifically, Pearl Harbor. Then there was the question of how to appeal to the widest demographic. Since bombs and bullets pretty much covered the guys, they probably threw a love story in there for the women, and an African American character for African-Americans. Was Dorie Miller an important part? Of course, but did they give him as much coverage as the two main characters, or, for that matter, as much as he deserved? No, which suggests to me that they threw him in there for the demographic, as his part was far from fully developed.
Does it stack up to "Saving Private Ryan?" Hell no, and to suggest it is ridiculous. The characters in "Ryan" are more three-dimensional, and the actors were better as well. "Ryan" shows that you can make a damn good three hour war movie that doesn't need to pander to the masses and still be commercially successful. The action in "Ryan," while not as expensive, was much more realistic. "Pearl Harbor" fell prey to the "Episode One" syndrome, in that they overdid the special effects to the point where they were far from realistic. On top of it, "Pearl Harbor" was rated PG-13, as opposed to "Ryan," which was rated R, showing that it didn't pull any punches with its graphic nature. Blame it on Disney, the "family-friendly" studio who probably didn't want "blood" and "gore" attached to their project, or, "realism." The PG-13 rating once again suggests that they wanted to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and skip that pesky under 17, R-rated policy to grab as many teenagers as possible.
And how bad was the story itself? Aside from what the trailers and teasers gave away, it was very predictable. As soon as Evelyn told Rafe she would give her heart to Danny, but still love him, you knew that Danny was going to die and Rafe was going to live. How? Well, first of all, Ben Affleck is the main character, and Josh Hartnett is the supporting character. Ben Affleck is considered the bigger sex symbol, so to appease the majority of women, he, of course, gets the girl. It's typical sappy love story crap. Of course, in this movie, as opposed to a love story, it doesn't fit. It is also hard to believe that with the seemingly hundreds of planes in Pearl Harbor, only two were scrambled, and because it's what people like to see, both are piloted by the heroes. I'm not an expert in Pearl Harbor history, so it may have been true that only two made it.
So, the final verdict? Bruckheimer and Bay made this movie for the money, and have lost their artistic integrity as far as I am concerned, as well as my respect. The problem was that they spent way too much money on the special effects, and not enough on the story. On top of it, they seemed to have forgotten that they were dealing with a historic event, and they do not have the right to change events to make the movie more entertaining for the masses.
Final Verdict - 4/10.