"Pearl Harbor" was nothing more than a bunch of studio suits hypothisizing: what if they had to save Private Ryan from the Titanic? It featured the worst romantic dialogue I've ever heard: ("Life didn't ask me what I wanted. But I only hope that as a gaze out into the sunset, I can catch the last few rays, and send them to your heart.). The love story was so deadly dull that by the time you got to the bombing sequence, you didn't care anymore, and the bombing sequence was played as sn action extravaganza, or in other words, for cheap thrills, which I found to be profoundly disrespectful to the real victims. Even survivors of the real bombing complained that it was nowhere near that exciting or loud. I also felt that the movie protrayed the Americans as perfect saints and the Japanese as inhuman monsters (apparently during the bombing of Tokyo, no actual people were hurt.). I hate war movies that don't portray the brutality and horrors of war. This was a Harlequin romance novel set in a WWII backdrop, and I think it was appalling.
Also, it featured Cuba Gooding, Jr, which is enough reason to hate any movie.
As far as "the Island," I do agree that it was a concept that could have been developed much better than it was. A better script and a better director, some seriosu rethinking to fix the plot holes, and they could have had one of the best movies of the summer.
