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US critics attack 'Pearl Horror' as ultimate Hollywood bilge
By Simon Davis in Los Angeles

CRITICS have lambasted the £100 million Hollywood film Pearl Harbor, describing it as incoherent, jingoistic, timid, naive and inconsequential.

One called it the "ultimate modern example of Hollywood bloat and bilge". The film, which was last week given the world's most expensive première aboard an aircraft carrier in Hawaii, has received the most withering reviews for a blockbuster since Kevin Costner's £140 million flop Waterworld. The New York Post called the film "Pearl Horror".

But the film is still expected to take up to £53 million at the American box office this Memorial Day weekend. Disney's marketing has suggested that it is the duty of all Americans to watch the attack that killed 2,400 of their countrymen.

Todd McCarthy, film critic for the Hollywood industry paper Daily Variety, said Pearl Harbor was American propaganda of the worst kind. Asian-Americans fear it could spark a violent reaction against their communities.

George Yuzawa, 86, one of 120,000 Japanese-Americans interned after the attack, said: "It will create a lot of animosity, not only against the Japanese but anyone who has an Asian face." Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii said the film might cause some people to reflect negatively on Japanese-Americans but urged them to see it anyway.

Disney said it had tried to be sensitive in its portrayal of Japanese-Americans. There were unconfirmed rumours that it might change elements of the film for audiences in Japan. Critics from the New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter slated the film for its shallow characters, trite love story and lip service to historical fact.

One critic said: "It's a self-aggrandising, shallow, intensely dull movie." Most critics agree that the only part worth watching is a lengthy sequence of the attack itself. Particular scorn is poured over Hans Zimmer's lumpy score and the "leaden clank" of Randall Wallace's screenplay. Wallace also wrote Mel Gibson's Braveheart.

"If there are many more back home like you," a British officer tells one of the heroes, "God help anyone who goes to war with America." One American pilot says: "We're not anxious to die. Just anxious to matter."

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

Answers

And if it weren't for the fact that the trailer for the Lord of the Rings is attached to this film, I wouldn't consider seeing it either.

-- Anonymous, May 30, 2001