Oh. My. God.

Rating: 2/10 (26 June 2001)

Some movies are so bad they're funny. Pearl Harbor isn't one of them: it's so bad it's... interesting. I spent most of this very long film thinking about the various ways in which it was awful. Michael Bay seems to be the Jade Fox of directors - he obviously owns a copy of How To Make A Classic Movie but he's only looked at the pictures, not the text. Films like Armageddon are forgivable because they're just bubblegum, but Pearl Harbor really, really wants to be a sweeping wartime romance (or epic romantic war story, or whatever) in the classic mode and it really, really, *really* isn't. A few things that stand out as particularly dreadful: the hamfisted History 101 newsreels, the RAF guy's awe at just how heroic Ben Affleck is, the perfunctory and staggeringly patronising treatment of Cuba Gooding's character, the whole fourth act (a cruel blow to those of us who had assumed there were only three). Actually the Japanese assault is very well done - the special effects are superb and the whole thing degenerates into an obscene massacre, as presumably it did in real life, but then Bay ruins everything with the tearful music and the slo-mo and the blurry bits and the obligatory dead likeable supporting character and the whole blasted fourth act which is there only because (a) you can't have a movie end with the US on its knees and (b) you can only resolve a Hollywood love triangle by killing one of the protagonists and none of them is dead yet. Did I mention the nauseating patriotism? Maybe if you're American it's okay, but Kate Beckinsale's voiceover at the end is truly horrible.