the worst movie of the year

Rating: 2/10 (5 December 2001)

After months of hype, the most highly anticipated movie of the year has finally arrived, and guess what, its a BOMB. Not just a bomb but a giant stink bomb to be more precise. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed with a summer movie. Sure there have been much worse movies made, but never one with a trailer that actually put chills down my back. As I left the theatre I could not help but ask myself what I (or the public) had ever done to Jerry Bruckhiemer that made him feel it necessary to inflict such a god-awful piece of crap upon us. I've always liked Bruckhiemer movies, even the ones others didn't. I don't recall ever being let down by one of his films (I even liked Gone In 60 Seconds and Coyote Ugly), they were hokey fun and I excepted them as such. But with Pearl Harbor, Bruckhiemer and director Michael Bay (Who I also use to worship) have entered new ground: the historical war film. Well, new to them anyway. Unfortunately, they thought they were still making their standard action films and didn't realize that when making war films you have to worry about things like realism and historical accuracy. So Pearl Harbor ended up being just another drawn out, flag waving, Hollywoodized flick that glamorizes war to no end. The plot, if you can call it that, centers around two childhood friends (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) who fall in love with the same woman (Kate Beckinsale) during World War II. Yes, that's right it's a love story too. And just about the lamest, unromantic love story I've ever seen. Most of this problem comes care of Bay, who is absolutely amazing at shooting action sequences, but doesn't know jack s**t about creating attraction or chemistry between two characters. Every time Affleck and Beckinsale have a romantic moment it is followed immediately with slapstick humor. Whether Affleck's shooting a cork in his eye or falling 20 feet from the side of a boat, the filmmakers obviously thought that our attention span was so short, that we could only handle 2-3 lines of dialog before we got board and needed a laugh. Which brings us to the attack. After 90 minutes of imitation love story, we finally get a chance to see something blow up. And stuff does blow up, quite nicely too, but since you have been board for the last hour and a half and don't care about the characters, all the blowing up has very little impact. However, it is the most entertaining part of the film and the 40 minutes go by very quickly. If the film had ended here I would have given it 3 stars and considered it OK. But the filmmakers could not have ended with the Americans losing, no, that would have been a downer, and remember this is a feel-good war. So, it drags on for another hour showing Doolittle's pointless raid over Tokyo and turning it in to massive victory for the Americans. Never have I seen so much flag waving, this thing is even more pro-America than The Patriot. I mean, there's national pride and then there's propaganda. Oh, I forgot to mention how cheesy the whole movie is. It's overflowing with cheese. They use every trick in the book to make the audience feel like they are watching something important. A ship cook earns respect, a soldier is reunited with his lost dog and drowning soldiers stop swimming for their lives so they can cheer when a Japanese plane is shot down. But the cheesiest moment of all, perhaps in all of movie history, comes when Jon Voight (playing the wheelchair-bound FDR) is told that a raid on Tokyo can't be done, and rises up out of his chair to shout "IT CAN BE DONE!!!!!!!". I couldn't help but crack up in the theatre. I could probably think of more things wrong with Pearl Harbor but you are probably tired of reading this long review. Just do you self a favor and spend your money on somewhere else.