Okay folks, strap in. Six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States of America was concerned about another attack on US soil. 1941 follows a bunch of people in and around California over the course of one day, including:
– The crew of a Japanese submarine searching for something honourable to destroy, commanded by Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune) alongside German officer Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt (Christopher Lee), and eventually kidnapping Christmas tree salesman Hollis P. Wood (Slim Pickens).
– US Air Force captain “Wild” Bill Kelso (John Belushi) apparently chasing Japanese aircraft in his Warhawk.
– Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson) attempting to seduce old girlfriend Donna Stratton (Nancy Allen), now the secretary of General Stillwell (Robert Stack), complicated by the fact that Stratton can only become aroused in a flying airplane, and Birkhead is not a qualified pilot.
– Civilian couple Ward and Joan Douglas (Ned Beatty and Lorraine Gary) are presented with an anti-aircraft gun due to the coastal location of their home.
– The Douglas’ daughter, Betty (Dianne Kay), wants to go to the jitterbug dance with newly-unemployed former-dishwasher Wally (Bobby Di Cicco), which becomes a problem when the dance becomes only available to enlisted men, much to the joy of the aggressive Corporal Sitarski (Treat Williams), who has eyes for Betty, whilst Betty’s friend Maxine (Wendie Jo Sperber) very much has the hots for Sitarski.
– Two members of the Ground Observer Corps (Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen) are posted atop a Ferris wheel, keeping watch for any approaching enemy forces.
– And finally, devoid of any real through-plot, there’s a tank crew comprised of Sergeant Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and Privates Foley (John Candy), Reese (Mickey Rourke), Henshaw (Walter Olkewicz) and new addition Jones (Frank McRae).

Some of my Spielberg blind spots are near complete mysteries to me – I know so very little about the likes of Always, Amistad or Empire of the Sun, but before settling in to 1941 I was aware of one fact about the film – it’s not good. Widely regarded as the nadir of Spielberg’s filmography, and with a substantial chasm between it and whatever you may consider to be his second-worst film – for me that might be The BFG, but I’ll do a full ranking after completing this project – I wasn’t exactly looking forward to watching it, but I was at least a little curious. It felt like the kind of film I could experience whilst doing something else, so I saved up a load of ironing and hit play, only to discover that what I was watching was not just the regular theatrical version of 1941, but the elongated television version, complete with an additional 20-ish minutes. I’m lead to believe this fleshed out some subplots, and gave some minor characters a little more to do, and if that made it a better film then I feel very sorry for anyone who has only seen the shorter cut, because my experience was not a good one.

There’s just far too much going on, and so little of it is funny or even entertaining, despite the calibre of everyone involved. The few moments I laughed are as follows:

• The reveal of a ventriloquist puppet version of Eddie Deezen’s character sat between him and Murray Hamilton on the Ferris wheel, and basically anything the dummy did after that point.
• John Belushi’s repeated difficulties with drinking, be it smashing a glass bottle on his dashboard then chugging it anyway, or spewing coffee all over people on land.
• Slim Pickens eating a toy compass, then being strapped to a toilet and plied with prune juice.
• The dusty guy clapping in the cinema and creating a cloud of dust.

That’s it. Throughout there were a lot of scenes that were at the very least close to being funny, or I could tell what the joke was supposed to be, but it just didn’t work, and it made me sad how many of these featured John Candy or Dan Aykroyd. It certainly doesn’t help that a lot of the film has aged terribly – Candy’s character is very racist, especially towards the newest addition to his platoon (Frank McRae), Ned Beatty’s character gives Dianne Kay’s a father/daughter talk prior to her going to a dance, in which he doesn’t warn her about the dangers of boys, but implores her to “show them a good time”, and it’s difficult to find a line of dialogue that’s not engulfed in racial slurs. Aykroyd doing bits post concussion could’ve heralded a laugh or two, but didn’t. Maybe it’s the wartime setting, maybe it’s that we don’t spend enough time with any of these groups for the jokes to land, maybe it’s that they’re just not funny.

This felt a lot like another classic film I don’t particularly enjoy, American Graffiti. Both mostly take place over the course of one night, both heavily feature numerous young American men trying to have sex, both are filled with unlikeable characters doing things I don’t care about and weren’t entertaining. I certainly didn’t expect 1941 to be an almost American Pie level frat comedy – Nancy Allen’s character even behaves like Kim Cattrall’s in Porky’s just with a plane fetish instead of a locker room.

So is it worth watching if you’re curious? Not really. There’s a few good bits – the opening sequence with Spielberg parodying his own Jaws, with Susan Backlinie essentially reprising her role of Chrissie Watkins only to become stranded naked atop a Japanese submarine – worked well enough, but didn’t really go anywhere. In fact, the whole submarine section was the most incongruous, with Slim Pickens’ character up and disappearing and wasting both Toshiro Mifune and Sir Christopher Lee. Dan Aykroyd feels like he was built especially to reel off tank specifications, Treat Williams makes a pretty good bad guy (he refers to Betty as a “port of entry” directly in front of her), the jitterbug dance sequence was actually a lot of fun, and I felt so sorry for Robert Stack every time someone interrupted him just trying to watch Dumbo. John Williams’ score is up there as a highlight too, which says a lot coming from someone who is usually oblivious to scores even existing, but I was whistling this one when the end credits arrived!

It’s going to be hard to knock this off the bottom spot of Spielberg’s list. I imagine even the theatrical cut probably feels too long, and I was bored within the first twenty minutes. It’s very surprising in a Spielberg movie to see some of our heroes setting out to destroy a cinema, and I just wanted them to keep cutting back to the antics of the puppet on the Ferris wheel, instead of letting over an hour go by between sightings!

Choose Life 3/10