The “shit” movie Kate Beckinsale knew was doomed: “I can’t really judge it”
Some people have acting in their blood, and Kate Beckinsale is one of them.
Her parents were both performers. Her father, Richard Beckinsale, was best known for appearing in classic British sitcoms like Porridge and Rising Damp, while her mother, Judy Loe, had a regular role in medical series Casualty. Needless to say that their daughter went on to eclipse their star power several times over, but even being raised in the world of show business doesn’t make you immune to bad decisions.
Beckinsale’s career is littered with flops. There’s The Only Living Boy in New York, Marc Webb’s cringeworthy romantic drama. Or how about the Colin Farrell-fronted remake of Total Recall, or Adam Sandler’s appalling Click, or Tiptoes, the deeply offensive movie that should have been the end of Gary Oldman’s career? When it comes to her back catalogue, however, it’s hard to look past Pearl Harbor.
Michael Bay’s heavily fictionalised and stunningly terrible retelling of the infamous historical moment is widely regarded as an all-time stinker. A 183-minute long slog that bafflingly chose to place a love triangle at the centre of events, the movie was torn to pieces by critics.
Beckinsale plays Evelyn Johnson, the object of both Ben Affleck’s and Josh Hartnett’s affections. Like many of those who saw the film, she had very few nice things to say about it.
“It was an extraordinary achievement to survive how shocking it all was,” she told Empire. “The fact that I had a relatively new baby was probably what saved me from absolutely freaking out. We were doing press six months before it came out, and people were already saying how shit the movie was. I can’t really judge it as a movie… I haven’t seen it for years, but if my daughter ever showed any interest, I’d probably sit and watch it with her.”
Beckinsale wasn’t the only one who disliked Pearl Harbor. A number of military veterans came forward to denounce the movie as an insult. Kenneth Taylor, a survivor of the attack whose story inspired parts of the film, called it “a piece of trash”. Inexplicably, it was rewarded with an Oscar, albeit in a technical category (‘Best Sound Editing’). Some justice was restored when it was also nominated for ‘Worst Picture’ at the Razzies, one of many, many Bay projects to be given this ‘honour’.
To give the movie some credit, it was an extremely troubled production. Disney, which helped finance the picture through their Touchstone Productions offshoot, initially agreed to a budget of $206million, eventually downgraded to $140m, which is still pretty high, just not as high as they were hoping for. Further clashes ensued when the ‘House of Mouse’ ordered Bay to make the movie suitable for a PG-13 certificate. This curtailed many of the director’s original plans and forced him to present a much more sanitised version of one of the great tragedies of the Second World War.
All that to one side, Pearl Harbor is still one of the great follies of 21st-century cinema. Bay flew way too close to the sun on this one and dragged everyone else down with him, including a very pissed off Kate Beckinsale.
