A Film That Will Live in Infamy

Pearl Harbor
*****

I hereby nominate Pearl Harbor as the Worst Film of All Time. It has a lot of competition, I know. But hear me out. I’m sure there are objectively worse films. But doesn't it makes sense to judge a film not solely relative to other movies, but also against what that film could, and should, have been? Imagine, for a moment, what this movie have been in the hands of a more capable cast and director.

Let's face it: this three-hour waste of time should be renamed Weird Love Triangle in 1941. As Bill Maher might put it: New Rule: If you decide to title a movie after a historical event, then you have a special obligation not only to do the film well, but also to actually focus on that event. If the filmmakers decided to name a movie Pearl Harbor, it should actually be about Pearl Harbor, simply because now it is “The” film about the event. Instead, the Pearl Harbor attack looks like a random scene dropped-in from an entirely different film. Viewers watched a bunch of CGI bombs falling, people running around, and suddenly it was over.

The rest of Pearl Harbor focused on an inane love story in a pathetic attempt to make the audience identify with the characters. I suppose one could level the same criticism at Titanic, but at least that film actually focused on the sinking ship, and interwove the love story in a somewhat sensible way with the sinking of the doomed vessel. But with Pearl Harbor, it’s as though the central historical event bore no relationship to the rest of the film. I guess that's the point, isn't it? The special effects trump character yet again.

To be honest, long before the end, I was hoping that all three of the main characters would die -- and thereby spare me the continually agonizing reminder that I wasted $9 to watch what amounted to the celluloid equivalent of excrement.