Despite tremendous success at the box office, and a lot of spectacular effects, there's something disappointing about this film. Perhaps the way so many women—not the usual audience for war movies—flocked to see this one provides a clue. Rather to the horror of the war movie afficionado, what "Pearl Harbor" turns out to be is (gasp!) a chick flick.

You have to give the producer and director credit for trying. The action sequences are good, with much of the pre-production fears that the warships would be obviously modern turning out to be incorrect. (The modern hulls in the live-action sequences were altered by computer generated effects to resemble the correct ships.)

But there's a pointless, and seemingly endless, love story that gets in the way of the action. Tora! Tora! Tora! did it better. My own advice would be to fast forward through most of the preliminaries and just watch the action sequences.

The "60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition" includes a History Channel documentary on Pearl Harbor that helps make up for the mush.

Pearl Harbor (DVD)