Too ambitious, too over hyped

Rating: 7/10 (11 June 2001)

To start I must admit that Pearl Harbor has the most stunning special effects I have yet seen in a film yet. The visual effects wizards at ILM have really outdone themselves.
Now, I enjoyed the first part of the film. The love story was hokey but acceptable (it really dissolves in the second part though due to poor scripting). And the attack on Pearl Harbor is an audio and visual feast and I enjoyed it...until I realised that it went on longer than it should of and became repetitious and unnecessary. The last part of the film became plain brain numbing stupidity and should have been cut short. Overall, don't take Pearl Harbor as a history lesson, take it as popcorn entertainment.
And to Michael Bay, stop trying to be too ambitious, the movie becomes over saturated. This is WAY too much like James Cameron's Titanic, I'm not going to describe how, see it for yourself. This is no surprise, as Bay is a wannabe Cameron. Randall Wallace could have come up with a better script instead of this poor effort. The dialogue is too clichÃ©d and at times laughable.
I give this film an average rating, but only for entertainment value, not for a deep, multi-layered film. The cast is great, the production values are excellent and the film really is an audio/visual feast, let down by a poor script and over length.