Whenever Hollywood and history walk the aisle, you know it's going to be a marriage akin to that (or rather, those) of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. The ceremony is fine and the reception is plush; the couple is adorned in finery. The friends are breathless with anticipation and glowingly optimistic. But sooner or later, the yelling is going to start and art objects are going to become airborne. Inevitably, everybody winds up in divorce court talking about what a mistake it all was.

History has been rewritten a multitude of times by the titans of Tinseltown -- sometimes with utterly no regard for facts, other times with some flirtation toward them, and on still other occasions when producers and directors stand somberly on some red carpet and boast that their latest offering is "historically accurate." This promise often has all the credibility of the kid next door who talked you into trading him your roller skates for his jelly beans, not that we're still bitter, of course.

Your correspondent was a history major over Chapel Hill way, and thus takes every opportunity to convince youngsters of his acquaintance to see historical films in hopes they'll be enlightened and convinced that history and related disciplines are not, in fact, "dull" and "boring" and "a pain," and that they might have a spark light up that will drive them toward the honor roll, so consumed will they be by history.

Time and again, hopes are dashed. This is true of "The Alamo," the much-ballyhooed Disney picture which presumes, finally, to tell the true story of the 1836 siege of an old Texas mission wherein 200 or so freedom fighters kept 2,000 (or 5,000, or 7,000, or 60,000, depending upon your choice of fact) troops under the direction of Gen. Santa Anna at bay, until the Mexicans slaughtered them all. The glorious defeat, it is said, inspired Gen. Sam Houston to lead his soldiers to win freedom for Texas, riding as they did under the cry, "Remember the Alamo!"

No sparks were seen here. The reactions I observed, in fact, were similar to those seen after "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals," Civil War epics, wherein Robert Edward Lee was portrayed as going about for hours as if suffering from an intestinal bug of some kind and spoke with a phony profundity that might have resulted in victory had the Yankees been forced to listen over a prolonged period of time.

In this fiasco, Gen. Houston as portrayed by a fellow named Dennis Quaid appears to have borrowed R.E.'s straw, for he has upon his face the countenance of a man with deep regret over last night's chili. One of the battle's heroes, William Travis (the commander), comes across as a dandy who would, at the sight of the first drop of blood, yell, "A rag and some soap here! This is Italian leather, you know!" Jim Bowie, he of the knife of the same name, is abed with consumption and still manages to fire away when Santa Anna's troops come for him, but the Hollywood-hunk type playing him looks like he belongs on "The Young and the Restless." Davy Crockett, king of the frontier and a congressman from Tennessee, is a fellow full of fun and grit, defiant to the end, and is probably the only character not firing off a letter of protest to the Heavenly Hollywood Reporter, as he was well done by nonconformist actor Billy Bob Thornton. Santa Anna? A wimp -- won only because he had more guys.

Historians note that even though there were some eyewitnesses, debates continue about all the historical nuances regarding the fall of the Alamo. First among them is apparently whether Crockett died in battle or was executed. (To which he'd probably say, that's a little more than a nuance to me, pal.) So no account would satisfy everybody. Those who created this version of the story are apparently proud of the fact that theirs is the most accurate rendering to date.

Maybe so, but this is great and glorious history, yet it's such a bad movie that some critics of Disney chief Michael Eisner, once the crown prince of Hollywood, are wondering if his chances are about even with Bowie's.

The unfortunate thing is, a lot of youngsters will take "The Alamo" as gospel, just as they bought "Gods and Generals" or the biopics of Babe Ruth or a multitude of other "true" stories, and that's a shame. Because, as anyone knows who saw the "Titanic" movie and then visited the artifact display at the state's natural science museum, history is often, if not always, a much more interesting story.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.