Reasons why this film got criticized so much.

Rating: 5/10 (28 May 2008)

Why is this film so widely criticized? Here are the reasons I gathered. --May contain Spoilers --
1. Too typical "Super Hero" type American action movie for a movie that's supposed to be serious and realistic. Even the main characters are fictional characters, they shouldn't be almost invincible. Too many examples, here are some of them. Rake didn't die or seriously injured crashing his fighter into the English Channel. With Danny, in Pearl Harbor, sitting in the convertible car while rushing to the air field, was direct hit by gun fire from Zeros, yet both guys were unscratched. Even the 7.62mm gun from Zeros can penetrate that car, not to mention if they ever used the 20mm cannon. In the air field, while scores of armies and pilots were shot dead by Zero's strafing bullets, these two guys were completely unharmed so were some of their buddies. During the "dog fight", they were flying way too dangerously low to the ground and close to buildings. One shot showing the fighter going through a tight alley between two buildings diagonally, impossible! At the end of the dog fights, they must have been dead exhausted from all the running around and flying, yet they can still give blood, and later assist on rescue of the capsized ship. At the end of the Doolittle Raid, they're out of fuel and ditching their planes, while Rake's crash landing was sort of realistic, the way Danny's plane crashed and impacted on the ground would no doubt be killing all on board. From the remains of Danny's plane they're showing, there was no way that anyone in that plane can still be in one piece. Yet Gooz and Danny were still alive, aside from moderate injuries.
2. Too much historical, factual and technical errors, so much that you can call the producers insincere for making such a high budget film, which the primary purpose is to depict an important historical event, i.e. it's title "Pearl Harbor". The Goof list is a long one here in IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213149/goofs . The inconsistency of the positions of the battle ships during the battle scenes are completely unacceptable, since that's the most important aspect of the attack. It's an eye sore to see obviously modern Naval warships in the harbor, including 3 pack together side by side, being used as WWII warships that were blown up during the attack. If they're using CGI effects for recreating the battle ships, why not alter these to at least make them look more historically correct for WWII era type ships. Saving budget, no time, or just laziness? Same for the aircraft carriers, obviously are modern carriers, with the two rectangular protrusions in the front of fly deck, which are part of the steam catapult system for modern jet fighters! During the take off sequence of the Japanese planes from their carrier, a fly by showing an even more ridiculous sight -- an aircraft carrier having airplanes take off in the tail end of the ship (you can see the catapult in the front, while planes take off from the other end), completely in the wrong direction! No one, not even for WWII carriers, that you take off from the tail of the carrier, LOL! This is unforgivable mistake, but again it's so easy to correct with their CGI animation. I don't know if these lack of attentions to details are due to the fact that the director "Michael Bay (himself were trying to) quit the movie project four times over various disputes" (from IMDb Trivia of this film).
3. This movie is no doubt trying to pack too much stuffs into one film. Romantic stories, jam packed with historical facts / events / speeches, which some of these are just brief add-ins, like all the Japanese planning scenes are no more than 5 minutes combined. Jam packed with tons super action heroes stuffs, and of course all the CGI / explosives special effects, which is the main selling point of this movie. Pearl Harbor not only, but also battle of Britain, Doolittle's Raid, and a bit of close quarter combat with Japs. Too much! Sometimes, trying to do too much can be a very bad thing. And this movie shows.
It's OK to have some romance and hot chicks. It's OK to add a bit of fiction to a historical story. But it's not good if you're trying to do too much, with sacrifice to quality / details, and add in too much cheesy actions and dialogs. Especially, when you have a forerunner film like Tora Tora Tora to compare with, this film is simply inferior without compare.
This film do worth 5 points though, for its stunning color and picture quality, beautiful ladies, and at least for the effort of filming such complex project and coordinating those dangerous stunts. And this movie did provide additional critical details, that Tora Tora Tora had missed, such as the wooden piece that makes the torpedo able to be used in shallow water, and the Japanese spy activities in the area.