Bloated and boring, Pearl Harbor is a collection of war-movie clichés in search of an epic. Director Michael Bay (Armageddon and The Rock) allows this sappy romantic drama disguised as an action film to drag on for three finger-drumming hours. While the actual, extended battle scenes are technically dazzling—full of diving fighter bombers and exploding warships—the story and dialogue that surround and accompany them are as hackneyed as that of any daytime soap opera.
Pearl lollygags forever setting up a pre-Dec. 7,1941, love triangle among three fictional characters: Rafe (Affleck) and Danny (Hartnett), flyboys who grew up best buds in rural Tennessee, and Evelyn (Beckinsale, see p. 71), a military nurse. She falls in love with the cocky Rafe first, but he volunteers for service over in England and is reported dead. She then finds comfort in Danny's arms when both men are stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. As they laze about on the beach, Evelyn asks, "Do you ever wonder if this war is going to catch up with us?" Cue the bombers.
Rafe returns, of course, just in time for the aerial attack that would spur America's entry into WWII. He and Danny do what they can ("Just get me into a damn plane," Rafe yells), but Pearl at least has the grace not to tamper with history, acknowledging that Japan's surprise raid left 2,400 Americans dead and destroyed half of our Pacific fleet.
Affleck, strappingly handsome, comes across here as a movie star playing a movie star playing a character. Hartnett and Beckinsale fare better but only because they don't have to be quite as noble in every single scene. Gooding, portraying "Dorie" Miller, a real-life Navy mess attendant who courageously manned an antiaircraft gun during the raid, is solid, but his character feels awkwardly wedged into the main story. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Bombs away!
Kerry Washington, Anna Simpson, Melissa Martinez
Lanisha, Joycelyn and Maria, three 15-year-olds living in a gritty section of Brooklyn, are spending their free time during a recent August hanging out in the park by the projects, talking about clothes, boys and their futures. All three have jobs: Lanisha (Washington) and Maria (Martinez) at a bakery, Joycelyn (Simpson) at a makeup store. And as members of the Jackie Robinson Steppers Marching Band, a real-life 60-piece group in the neighborhood, they are practicing for an appearance at a Labor Day parade.
Our Song is a small, richly compelling drama in which nothing much--and yet everything--happens. By summer's end the contours of this trio's friendship will have shifted dramatically as one learns she's pregnant (when she tells the father, the boy doesn't even remove his headphones), another switches schools and a third drifts off to other friends. Director-writer Jim McKay (Girls Town) captures exactly how teenage girls talk and behave and what it's like to be almost grown up but still need a grown-up's counseling. (R)
Bottom Line: A Song worth hearingZhang Ziyi, Zheng Hao
When her beloved husband dies, an elderly Chinese widow insists on weaving by hand a covering for his coffin just as, many years before, she wove a red cloth to bring him good luck teaching at a newly built rural school. Weaving past and present together with just as much care, The Road Home shifts gracefully between the widow's preparations for the funeral and her determined pursuit as an 18-year-old villager (played by Ziyi, the younger woman warrior in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) of the shy young schoolmaster who would become her spouse. (G)
Bottom Line: Home is where the heart is
John Leguizamo
In Moulin Rouge, a cancan-dancing Nicole Kidman gets to show off her legs. Poor John Leguizamo has to hide his. "For most of the film I'm standing on my knees on fake ankles," explains the actor, who plays the 4'11" French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the $50 million period musical. "My knees were hurting, man. Nicole and I would fight for the masseuse."
An easy battle, considering that Leguizamo, 40, had to fight for the role in the first place. Director Baz Luhrmann had wanted an Englishman to play Lautrec, a lisping bohemian dwarf, but relented after Leguizamo auditioned for two hours. Why so keen? Toulouse-Lautrec "was crazy. He was a nut," says Leguizamo—clearly qualities to which the Colombian-born comic can relate. When he was 4, Leguizamo's family moved to Queens, where his experiences as a smart-tongued Hispanic kid provided fodder for a stand-up comedy career that has taken him from the downtown clubs of Manhattan to Broadway and, eventually, Hollywood. In 1995 he garnered strong reviews as a transvestite in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and hasn't looked back.
Next up is Collateral Damage, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a 22-city tour of his new one-man show Live, for which he has a fresh source of material: longtime girlfriend Justine Maurer, 33, and daughter Allegra Sky, 1½, and son Ryder, 6 months, with whom he lives in New York City. Only one thing is missing. With kids, he says, "you never sleep."
Angel Eyes
Dopey romantic thriller is a time waster for Jennifer Lopez. (R)
Bridget Jones's Diary
Renée Zellweger is a hoot in this swell romantic comedy. Hugh Grant costars. (R)
Memento
The plot runs backward, and the hero (Guy Pearce) suffers from memory loss in an ultracool thriller (R)
Shrek
Go for the green. In this monstrously clever animated film, a chartreuse-colored ogre named Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) learns that it is what's inside you that counts. (PG)
- Contributors:
- Pete Norman.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
