I wanted to dislike "Pearl Harbor" more than I did. After all, the movie was directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the dynamic duo behind the banal "Armageddon." I loath that flick — a noisy, obnoxious, pastiche of better movies that was undeservedly one of the biggest hits of 1998. When I heard that Bay and Bruckheimer were making a big summer movie about Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, I prepared myself for another bloated piñata of stale eye candy.

I really wanted to cut this movie to shreds. Blast the filmmakers for taking a tragic event in our history and turning it into a fizzy summer cocktail, but the movie’s not half bad. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t hate it. The performances are cheesy, but sincere. The effects are spectacular, but not excessive. The story drags, but has heart. While as a whole, "Pearl Harbor" is an average film, it’s still not the festering pile that was "Armageddon." It’s not the soulless studio trash I was expecting.

You can tell Bay and Bruckheimer had some respect for their subject matter. While they mishandle a number of scenes, they do justice to the attack itself. The filmmakers aren’t delivering cheap thrills in these moments. They are trying to bring the immense horror of the bombing to life. To an extent, they succeed. The special effects are mind numbing in their detail. You feel trapped in the midst of the attack. The film is almost worth seeing just for these scenes.

"Pearl Harbor" is not as shallow as some of the other products of the Bay-Bruckheimer hit machine ("Bad Boys" and "The Rock"), but it’s not a searing docudrama either. The stars approach their roles with gusto — trying hard to prove that they’re more than just living scenery — but their efforts are hindered by a schmaltzy script (by Randall Wallace who wrote "Braveheart") and a director more adept at filming people blowing up than relating to one another.

Ben Affleck ("Chasing Amy") and Josh Hartnett ("The Virgin Suicides") are Rafe and Danny, boyhood best friends who grow up to become skilled Army pilots. They are eager to prove themselves as combat fliers, but are cooling their heels since the U.S. has not yet declared war. They bide their time by showing off during training exercises — the kind of flying that would get pilots discharged in real life, but serves as character development in the movies.

Rafe’s yearning for glory soon gets the better of him and he joins a squadron of American pilots fighting for the British forces. He leaves behind not only his best friend, but also his ladylove — Army Nurse Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale from "The Last Days of Disco"). While he’s gone, Danny and Evelyn are both transferred to Pearl Harbor. They strike up a friendship and fall into each other’s arms when they receive news that Rafe has been shot down behind enemy lines.

Since Affleck receives top billing in this thing, you know he’s going to turn up alive before too long. And he does, just in time to discover that his best buddy has been stepping out with his woman. Everybody cries, fights, gets drunk, then sobers up in time for the Japanese to bomb the hell out of their hometown. By this point, the audience has endured 90 minutes of a torpid soap opera just to get to the big payoff — the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now Bay and Bruckheimer definitely make it worth the wait. These scenes are the highlight of the film. If the movie had ended soon after this sequence, I think everything would have been okay.

But the film drones on for another hour, detailing America’s retaliatory bombing on Tokyo. The whole thing is anticlimactic. We paid to see the Pearl Harbor stuff. Let us go home already. When you name your movie, "Pearl Harbor," people expect it to be about the infamous Japanese sneak attack. But this flick concerns two hunky fighter pilots in love with a hot nurse. It just so happens that all this over-emoting takes place at the same time as the bombing. Historical events can definitely be intertwined with fictional characters to create an engrossing film. "Saving Private Ryan" is a prime example, but that movie had Steven Spielberg at the helm, not the auteur of "Armageddon." Maybe Director Bay should have studied that flick instead of "Titanic."

"Pearl Harbor" seems to closely follow James Cameron’s recipe for his Oscar-winning blockbuster. Take a tragic historic event; mix in young, attractive leads and a healthy dollop of visual effects. Simmer for three hours and serve to hungry audiences. But I think Bay is more short order cook than master chef. While his film has some tasty portions, overall, he’s concocted a pretty bland meal.