Review of 1941 (1979) by Bill M — 17 Jul 2017

A huge, slapdash, haphazard, big budget mess of a film, it's absolutely all over the place and doesnt seem like it really knows what it's doing, this is a rare misfire from steven speilberg, obviously drunk from the one two punch of the massively criticaly and comercialy succesfull oscar winning instant classics jaws and close encounters of the third kind, he was clearly in the position to do anything he wanted to do next and able to command any size budget he wished, feeling free to do something big, ambitious and crazy he made this, his only attempt at out and out comedy, set in a paranoid forties america in the aftermath of the pearl harbour attack, it involves a whole host of characters, played mostly by famous funny faces, all out to protect the american coastline from a japanese submarine (with chrisopher lee as a natzi in tow) thats targetting hollywood! and pretty much causing more destruction than the invaders have set out to do.

Speilberg had the obvious intention of making the biggest, maddest laughfest of all time, even casting nearly everyone from the origional saturday night live, viewing the results it's easy to see that he just got a bit lost.

It would turn out to be his only major flop, luckily he bounced back with raiders of the lost ark, winning back studio affections, and their wallets. However, despite the fact that this is a sometimes headache inducing, amazingly overblown folly of a film, theres still alot to enjoy and seriously admire, like the big dance competition scene, a giant flurry of wonderfully executed, extremely well chroreographed slapstick brilliance, and the awesome stunt work and highly accomplished practical visual effects ( especialy the incredible miniature work in the big finale free for all) All in all, very much a failure, but a sometimes amazing failure, less than the sum of it's parts but worth watching for many reasons.