Pearl Harbor: Critic Reviews

For my money a much better heartbreaker, thrillmaker and tear-tweaker than Titanic.

The woe and horror of the event is steamrolled by a surplus of special and digitized effects.

Mostly tests one's patience with unseaworthy dialogue and performers drowning in oily cliches.

The net result of this mighty effort is perhaps predictable: near total inconsequence.

This violent movie is worth seeing, but only once.

"Pearl Harbor" zips through cliches like a chainsaw ripping through a stack of Cliff's Notes.

May be the closest thing to a good movie Michael Bay will ever direct; unfortunately, it's still not very close to a good movie.

Shockingly, this saga is as aquare as they come: straight, earnest, and schmlatzy epic about the impact of WWII on two flyers in love with the same girl--a 1940s routine flick with special effects.

It's bad all right -- I was wincing at the overwritten dialogue within the first five minutes.

The film is not as painful as a blow to the head, but it will cost you up to $10, and it takes three hours.

[Michael] Bay didn't set out to make a film about Pearl Harbor. He set out to make a TITANIC clone that would go "Ka-ching" at the box office . . . Try TORA TORA TORA instead.

It's just a bit unfortunate that such an incredible, noble story, one which turned a nation around and galvanized a generation into action, should be told by such weak storytellers.

Bay's clunky and mammothly plodding Pearl Harbor is one movie that tries to do too many things at once without concentrating on any one specific point...the romance and action sequences are fussed over yet they deliver nothing really spectacular

I left with one thought: the bombers may have hit their targets, but this film misses the mark.

Ambitious, reverent and beautifully photographed though it is, Pearl Harbor ultimately is not equal to its aspirations.

The worst thing to happen to movies in the past decade--a bold-faced negation of art, craft, emotion and importance.

Pearl Harbor is what you get when you cross Independence Day with Titanic, with the result possessing the good qualities of neither. The movie gave me a stomachache, literally.

Bay is the most dangerous of directors, a hack who believes himself an auteur.

Wallace and Bay aren't striving for gutsy realism. "Pearl Harbor" isn't so much about the start of WWII as it is about Hollywood perceptions of WWII.

Pearl Harbor es un perfecto claroscuro. Tiene momentos realmente brillantes, asi como pasajes cursis y aburridamente melodramaticos.

So mesmo um diretor como Michael Bay poderia transformar o tragico ataque japones a base naval americana de Pearl Harbor em puro entretenimento - e isso nao e um elogio..

[Pearl Harbor] makes no attempt to teach a lesson in history, for fear of losing the interest of 12-year-olds and high-school teeny-boppers. Insulting.

A historical cartoon, a bit of fluff that neither much knows nor cares about the context of the events of December 7, 1941.

A mindless action movie passing as a serious war epic that is dragged out, unsure, and quite random.

Ultimately, what can be said about the film is that it is a disappointment ... It also confirms what most industry people suspected: Michael Bay is no James Cameron.