Review of 1941 (1979) by Tomas T — 05 Jan 2011

Six days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, panic grips California and Los Angeles, supposedly the next target of the Japanese forces. Chaos, riots and full blown nationalism erupts all over the state and the city. An Army Air Corps Captain, civilian defenders and a Motor Pool crew all end up on the trail of a lost Japanese sub that has picked Hollywood as their own target. Will these people be able to defend their homes? Will they be able to preserve the safety in California? Will they be able to get a hold of themselves?

"1941" was Steven Spielberg´s fourth film and it became as well his biggest Hollywood movie at that point. I reckon we can be safe to say that "1941" became a big budget movie with a massive wellknown cast. This was put together with a pretty crazy script partly based on real WWII events, in a gigantic pot which wasn´t really containing the bits that binds the essence together. "1941" is a mess in many ways, with bits and pieces that works or not works. It´s loud, over the top in all areas and surprisingly not that funny despite actors such as Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, John Candy etc. I saw this movie many years ago, and my feelings are still the same as then. It could have been so much better, because as said, there are parts that contains solid material, but I reckon both the screenwriters, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale plus Steven Spielberg had so many ideas and wanted so much from this movie that the final product ended up going in all sorts of directions.