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Surprisingly incoherent and boring

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I have not read the books, so I have no idea how true the movie is to them. I also haven't seen "Hawaii", to which this is apparently a stand-alone sequel, so I can't make any comparisons. I did live in Hawaii during high school, and had quite a few lessons in state and native Hawaiian history - much more than the writers had, apparently.The Chinese casting was very good, and mostly Chinese. Unfortunately there were few if any Hawaiians involved, except a few extras. Queen Liliuokalani, for example, is played by a Jewish woman doing an accent that could best be described as "aristocratic Italian". There's a couple of white women with impressive spray tans at different points in the movie, both playing mixed racial characters as far as I could tell. The wife of the main character is played by a very white woman, yet is supposed to be one-quarter Hawaiian.The native Hawaiian movement to keep Hawaii as an independent monarchy is illustrated by the insanity of the main character's wife. Her desire to get in touch with her roots is intermingled with her portrayed hysteria and tenuous grip on reality. The natives she lives among for a while are apparently just as nuts, since they never appear to notice that she's unhinged. There's a brief condemnation of exploitative white businessmen by the Queen, which is itself immediately undercut when she irately orders the execution of one. This seems to be aimed at dismissing the lingering modern opposition to the forceful overthrowing of the Hawaiian government by the US government.So the general impression is of successful white American businessmen building the future state, versus various savage ethnic groups engaging in violence and spreading disease. The Chinese woman and her son gain some success and respect by embracing the American way, starting a business, and going to law school. And even that success is marred by the Chinese businesswoman promising to overcome by out-breeding the whites.The acting and scenery were excellent, but this movie is a eurocentric relic which should stayed buried.

You have to admire James Michener's resolve. He's the guy who wrote the book this screen play is based on. Michener wrote one novel or non-fiction work after another, each of them requiring an unconscionable amount of historical and geographic research. There are a couple of dozen doctoral dissertations scattered among his books -- "Centennial," "Texas," "Alaska," "Poland," "Iberia." This is about a certain part of Hawiian history, a sprawling epic, as they say, following multiple narrative threads through three generations. The principal thread belongs to Charlton Heston, who begins as a reckless and uncaring sea captain and winds up as a cigar-puffing prosperous land owner, the evolution being the result of his willingness to take risks. The other main thread belongs to Tina Chen, who begins as an outcast young Chinese woman and becomes a socially prominent leader of the Chinese community in Honolulu. She's a minority among the Chinese in that she is Hakka, an internally marginal group in China. Her minority status isn't Michener's literary trick either. Hakka is one of half a dozen or so common dialects in Chinese and in one of my classes we had representatives of all of them lined up at the front of the room pronouncing one familiar word after another. There was an obvious family resemblance among most of them. You could "hear" the buried Cantonese word when it was spoken in Mandarin Chinese. But not Hakka. It was to the other dialects what Rumanian is to the other Romance languages.Wait a minute. Was that "off topic"? Well, it doesn't matter much. There's no describing the plot of this movie. If anything ever happened in Hawaiian history, it happens to somebody in this movie. You want to talk leprosy? Racism? The switch from a monarchy to a territory of the United States? The plague? Let it simply be said that it's all here.Charlton Heston is his usual monolithic self and fills the character appropriately. Tina Chen is a beautiful woman who is, at best, professional. We don't get to see much of Geraldine Chaplin, who rediscovers her native Hawiian genes and appears to go nuts. John Phillip Law isn't around much either. Tina Chen's husband is Mako (who is Japanese) and he's quite good in what is essentially the same role he played in "The Sand Pebbles." Some of the supporting players appear to have been chosen for their looks rather than their talent.I rather like Hawaii, at least as it was when I was last there, years ago. There's a good deal of solidarity to be found on the islands. During the turmoil of the 1960s when American cities were in the grip of violent revolutions or their simulacrums, Honolulu went quietly about its business, and that in a city more ethnically diverse than any found on the mainland.Anyway the film is worth watching. I can't say I was especially gripped by any of the incidents or characters. I'd recommend it if only for its educational properties. Michener was only rarely effective as a dramatist but all that time he put into his research certainly paid off.

I happened to be living in Hawaii when this was released (along with *Patton*) It was beautifully shot and the character portrayals were wonderful.Based somewhat on historical facts, Heston is the hard-bitten adventurer/entrepreneur responsible for bringing pineapples to the islands.As others have pointed out, the portrayal of the Asian immigration and subsequent influence in the islands is, if not accurate, certainly believable, given the Asian makeup of the island population, today.All of the performances are strong, revolving around Heston as the central 'motivator'. The camera work brings the beauty of Hawaii right up to your face. Finally, the fire is accurate - Honolulu suffered more than one huge fire in it's early days.I would very much like to see this out in DVD.

I'm sure that what attracted Charlton Heston to sign on for The Hawaiians was the fact he'd be working with director Tom Gries with whom he had done Will Penny and Number One. Will Penny was Heston's favorite film. The Hawaiians would mark the third and final joint project the two men worked on.Heston plays the grandson of that New England sea captain Richard Harris from the film Hawaii and the James Michener book it is based on. He's every bit the hell raiser that grandfather was, but has an eye for business and does have a vision for Hawaii. Of course it's not the same vision as the native Hawaiians had or the same vision that Chinese and Japanese immigrants have. That in a nutshell is the history of Hawaii.The rest of the white characters are descendants from the characters in the first film. The added component are the characters of Mako and Tina Chen who immigrate to Hawaii from China and found a small dynasty of their own. Their story and that of Heston and his family entwine over several decades.One thing I will say about The Hawaiians that is most admirable. The Asian and Pacific Islander characters you see here are portrayed as three dimensional and with dignity. No fortune cookie stereotypes are to be found in The Hawaiians. I've always been of the opinion that you cannot make a bad film about Hawaii because the scenery is so beautiful. The Hawaiians is no exception and the film did get an Oscar nomination for costume design.Tina Chen does a remarkable job as the matriarchal head of her family after Mako dies of leprosy on the island of Molokai. In a patriarchal culture that was by no means an easy thing. Her performance is the best acting in The Hawaiians.The Hawaiians has an Edna Ferber like sweep in its plot and its subject. It's also sticking close to the facts in terms of Hawaiian history, a very worthy film to see.