inaccurate? overly patriotic? still entertaining though

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2004)

SPOILERS
I won't deny I've been avoiding this film. When I learnt about it's release three years ago, I was going through a very anti-American stage, and as a result the sight of this film had turned my stomach. Skip forward to 2004 and the terrestrial television premiere. Sitting there watching this film, I pondered how accurate it was (this is not a period of History I pretend to know a lot of details about, I'm more of a renaissance Europe fan myself) and I groaned occasionally at awful lines. Over all though, I actually quite liked it.
In "Pearl Harbour", we're introduced to young Rafe and Danny (Affleck & Hartnett), two friends who grew up together and are like brothers. The two army fly boys spend all their time flying and hanging out together. Then the Nazi's invade Poland, WW2 in Europe begins and Rafe travels to England to join the good fight. Add to this situation the female input of the delectable Kate Beckinsale as a nurse and Rafe's love, and a three way love triangle develops. As the film progresses, the three experience first the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the entry into the war of America and then America's retaliation on Tokyo.
Like I'd said before, this film took a beating at the Box Office due to it's historical inaccuracy. I'll admit I'm not sure how inaccurate it is, although I'm sure it's not as bad as Gibson's farcical "The Patriot" or "U-571", but ultimately as long as you question every fact you see in the film, it doesn't matter.
Aside from historical questions, the other criticism of this film is that it's just generally not very good. For this point I must confess, I really disagree. Whilst there are some really awful lines in this film, and it's so ridiculously over patriotic, for graphics, plot (or sub-plot if you want to put the War as the main story ahead of the romance) and the vast ammounts of intensity, I feel it delivers. So it'll never be as dark or powerful as other war films ("Saving Private Ryan" to name one), and compared with other love stories it also falls short, all in all it's not as bad as everyone says.
If your looking for a film which combines the better parts of awful films (the boat & graphics from "Titanic", the romance from "Armageddon"), then watch this film. If your going to be touchy and condemn anything with even the most remote historical inaccuracy, or your going to insult any film which isn't Oscar material, then yeah ok avoid this. For a blockbuster to relax to on a Monday night though, it does the job quite nicely.