1941

There comes a time in every new filmmaker's career when a few initial successes makes them feel invulnerable and leads them to believe that they can do anything and get away with it, only for their hubris to be mercilessly destroyed when their next project turns out to be an absolute disaster.

1941 is an end product of Steven Spielberg's hubris that presents the now revered filmmaker tackling the genre of comedy after finding astonishing success with Jaws & Close Encounters, but this time he spectacularly fails at it. Arguably the worst film of his career, 1941 is nothing less than an eyesore.

Set during the Second World War, the story of 1941 follows the hysteria that grips the Californians in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbour. As paranoia sets in & chaos erupts all over the state, civilians & soldiers prepare for the Japanese invasion, while a lost Japanese submarine sends its crew to scout out the madness.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, 1941 finds the director trying way too hard in an effort to make the audience laugh but he only ends up making a mess of everything in the process. It appears as if Spielberg simply wanted to blow everything up and had his wish fulfilled with this big budget, big cast comedy that isn't even remotely funny.

The film is an exaggeration of everything. All the set pieces are either destroyed or blown up by the end. People keep falling here n there throughout the movie. All the characters are hyperactive. Performances are equally crazy, and not in a good way. Still, its energetic camerawork, extravagant special effects & John Williams' score is a plus.

On an overall scale, 1941 is a poorly conceived, awfully written & terribly executed example of blockbuster filmmaking and is a rare failure from a filmmaker who would later go on to become one of the greatest storytellers of all time. In retrospect, it's a bitter medicine that Spielberg needed, for 1941 didn't just knock some sense back into him and sober him up but also made him savour his future successes and not take his reputation for granted. A necessary dud.

As outlandish and hysterical as the war insanity of 1941 may seem, the plot tracks almost exactly a real incident reported the night of Feb. 24, 1942, in Los Angeles that began when Navy intelligence reported an attack by unidentified objects on their radar could be expected within the next 10 hours. Early the morning of the 25, radar tracked objects 120 miles west of Los Angeles and a blackout was ordered, triggering a flood of reports about enemy planes. Planes wre reported by the coast artillery near Long Beach (25 of them at 12,000 feet). Four batteries of anti aircraft guns at Santa Monica opened fire on a balloon with a flare and all hell broke loose, with so much ack-ack and searchlights scanning the sky that utter confusion reigned for at least three hours with reports of swarms of planes (hundreds in some cases) flying in at every altitude imaginable. Some 1,440 rounds of ammunition were fired at airplanes that never dropped a single bomb. There were reports four enemy planes had been shot down, including one that supposedly landed in flames at a Hollywood intersection. If this all sounds familiar, read on. At dawn, the only damage found was caused by stray ack-ack fire and traffic wrecks during the blackout. The Navy said the next day there were no enemy planes. The Army interviewed people and decided there were at least one to five planes over LA. The War Department then announced the planes must have come from secret air fields in California or Mexico or from Japanese submarines. The next day the Los Angeles Times criticized the "considerable public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert that scared 2 million people. One California politician wanted to know if it was a calculated prank to move California's defense industries inland to other states. The Washington Post followed on Feb. 27 with condemnation of the military's stubborn silence on the issue and the New York Times jumped in on Feb. 28 by calling the entire episode "incredible" and a display of "expensive incompetence." The movie is a wonderful glimpse of this real hysteria, a real incident and with quotes pulled right out of newspaper articles. When Robert Stack wants to know "where are the bombs?" that is the same question the Air Force and Navy asked when reports came in about the thousands of planes attacking LA. All this information is available from government files on Air Force history from the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. The Japanese, by the way never flew planes over LA, but did fly over Seattle, they said after the war. I LOVE 1941. It got everything absolutely right. Right down to Belushi's plane crashing into the street and crazies going off searching for hidden airfields near Bakersfield or Barstow or where ever. This was NOT a comedy. It was just about comical people. It should have won an Oscar for BEST DOCUMENTARY.

Why is it, in our society, that a movie's success is rated on monetary value?As with "Always", another Spielberg flop, I love "1941".It's a shame when a movie's success can be judged on box office revenue only.It's a great deal of fun, and it's what movies should be about, a chance to laugh,to smile, and if done correctly, a chance to leave our lives for a couple of hours."1941" may not be at the top of all time movie favorites, they're saving that space for the BIG money makers,But it belongs at top of true movie lovers lists everywhere!And to Stash,It's seems that "Close Encounters of a Third Kind"was another Spielberg Film, before "1941", that some might consider as BIG!

A Japanese sub off the coast of California looking for Hollywood so they can "blow the s**t out of something big". There's your plot.

Yeah, It's got some slapstick but this film cooks. It's sorta like a Murphy's Law about hysteria. What if everything went wrong? Could that happen? Yes! There's solid performances from everybody from the kid in the ferris wheel to Robert Stack (actually crying in a theatre while watching DUMBO). An intelligent piece of film work? No. But comedy doesn't have to be. M*A*S*H* it ain't, but it doesn't try to be either. Enjoy.

1941 is a unique movie. 1 part of it is animal house-esque lowbrow humor, 1 part is B-movie love story, and 1 part stoic war movie, and 2 parts insane hilarity.

It is a weird mix to say the least.

First, the problems: 1. The first half of the movie is slow. It grinds on making you wonder why you're watching this movie.

2. The "Love story" subplot is poorly executed for what this movie is trying to do.

3. many of the actors are not used to their fullest potential (especially Dan Akroyd and John Candy) while others receive excessive screen time. (see: The slow moving love story sub-plot) But then there are the good aspects: 1. John Belushi is hilarious. He would have been funnier had he interacted with more characters rather than appearing in many solo shots, but he was funny.

2. The "Epic Battle" was great. It had me laughing as my sides hurt.

3. Slim Pickens: His appearance in the movie was truly where the movie stopped being slow, and the fun really started. He was great in his scenes and between the dialogue and his visual scenes, you can't help but laugh.

There's more, but in short, if you don't mind sitting through a slow build up, the payoff is worth the wait.

It's not the best movie ever, but in the barren entertainment landscape that is Weekend Television: Finding this movie can be like an oasis in the desert. It's solid Saturday afternoon fun.