American propaganda

Rating: 1/10 (29 May 2001)

First of all, if you are brain-dead, this is the summer movie for you! Just read all the other comments! It had love, drama, action, patriotism etc....Riiight...
Please wake up, America, for once, and try not succumb to being spoon-fed the same old, no-brainer, trite Hollywood cheese.... There is so very much wrong with this "summer blockbuster" that it is difficult to find a place to begin. First, the love story, as lots of people pointed out, was so contrived it was almost embarassing. And how about our lovable stutterer that 'we can all laugh at'? Uh, I didn't find that funny at all, and I imagine one who has struggled with stuttering as a disability didn't either. How about FDR and his standing up from his wheelchair to illustrate the strength of the American people? Textbook Hollywood cheese....And Alec Baldwin as Doolittle? Are there any other fellow fans of SNL out there that had trouble sitting through Alec Baldwin play this goofy role with a straight face?! I felt like I was watching Frank Drebbin in the Naked Gun...
However the most disturbing aspect of this entire film, by far, was the sad and skewed "USA is #1!!" message throughout....Notice the ominous music used when the evil Japanese are shown onscreen...Or maybe the fact that the whole point of Pearl Harbor was that it was an attack sustained by the USA, and the USA, well, was defeated in it....but no, no, we can't portray the USA as NOT being #1, so we will follow our boy heroes as they shoot down a couple of planes during the attack to end the bombing sequence. Wow, it's like we weren't REALLY defeated! I mean look, our lovable Rafe and Danny survived and got 'em back in the skies! ....and even better, we of course can't possibly end this film on a USA is NOT #1 note (i.e., finishing it at the end of the attack), so we have to add in the Dolittle Tokyo bombing--aka, USA as the underdogs, with only a few planes, fighting the big bad Japanese empire and succeeding in one small way....Why don't we get a BIT more honest here and show the REAL revenge for Pearl Harbor, with the massive destruction and loss of 100,000 lives (as opposed to 7,000) in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why? Uh oh, because then the USA would be portrayed as being the REALLY bad guys, having desimated cities and killed 10 times the number of people. Remember, the USA is #1 and can do no wrong!
And if the you didn't manage to pick up on some of this propaganda, or it was all too subtle for you, it is all pretty much summed up in the little narration about how great and strong America is, at the end of this movie....I felt like I was sitting through Independence Day all over again, where America saved the world from an alien invasion! Unbelievable!
Please, pick up a book instead if watching this movie, and prove to Hollywood that, as a country, we demand a little more intelligence and depth from our "summer blockbusters" and will not put up with this empty formulaic filmmaking!