Review of 1941 (1941) by Damon S — 21 Jun 2009

About the messiest Spielberg film I've seen. You would have never believed he would achieve greatness if you judged him by this film. A few fleeting moments of amusing bits, most, if not all of of them, from John Belushi. It's not the madcap zaniness of the story that's the problem. There's certainly room for that. It's just that the movie doesn't seem to have a purpose. What's it supposed to be parodying? The stupidity of war, perhaps? Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much point to this movie except for Spielberg to throw things on the screen and watch what happens. Coherency is severely lacking, and we lose track of the Tim Matheson character about 3/4 of the way through, and he doesn't come back until the last few seconds. In fact, there's little closure to anything. Even Belushi's character, Capt. Kelso, perhaps the funnest character in the film, just ... leaves. Glad I saw it, just for novelty's sake (Spielberg directing several 70's comic icons in a war farce, co-written by Robert Zemeckis!), but I'm also glad it was a 99 cent rental on iTunes.

Worth noting that the movie's foreign language scenes lacked subtitles in the medium I saw it in. I don't know if that's a fault of the original film or not, but I don't think they would've helped nor hindered either way.