1941 (1979)
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1941 Movie Review
1941 is a 1979 war action comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Dan Aykroyd and Ned Beatty among others. It’s a poor flick.
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“We’ve got to figure out how to make these things smaller!“
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It is about a panic that ensues in California after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during December 1941. So Spielberg set out to make a comedy and this is a great example of how he simply never was as amazing and as diverse as Kubrick was. Kubrick could make a film out of any genre whereas Spielberg suffered with anything that isn’t a blockbuster or a period piece.
This was such a horrendous miscalculation on his part. What he did here is basically make fun of war, and World War II no less, and the end result is, needless to say, very much done in poor taste and quite unnecessary too. If it had been funny, maybe it would have been okay, but this one is never at all funny, just mildly amusing at times.
I did like some of the moments in the first act as those were less action-oriented and the movie started on a dated, but somewhat charming note. It definitely has some interesting scenes, and that ‘Jaws’ parody in the first scene is pretty good. But later on it becomes basically an action flick, and the action never ends and is so boring that the entire flick is very tiresome as a result.
1941 has an ensemble cast, and it does benefit from all these stars appearing throughout. However, none of them makes any sort of a bigger impression as the movie makes a fatal mistake of having way too many characters/actors, and thus all are blunted in impact. They did give good performances, but the characterization is so bad.
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I found it well shot and well scored, but not well edited at all, and Spielberg’s directing here is also quite subpar. The movie can get some mileage from its crazy tone of anarchy and madness, but overall it’s more dated and boring than amusing. I don’t know what he was thinking as this one turned out even worse than ‘The Sugarland Express’.
1941 does get some mileage out of its tone of madness and a solid ensemble cast. It has its amusing moments, but unfortunately those are rare. Most of it consists of mindless action, and simply making a comedy out of WWII felt very misguided. It’s an annoying, overloud flick that inarguably ranks among Spielberg’s worst.
