Very disappointed :(

Sadly Over-hyped

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Blistering performances.

Continuing my plan to watch every Steven Spielberg movie in order, I come to 1941.Spielberg totally gets this one wrong!! He even spoofs Jaws, right down to Susan Backlinie (Chrissie Watkins) reprising her role as the first victim in Jaws by playing a girl who goes skinny dipping at the beginning of this film. And whilst she has a nice bum, its in poor taste. You can check it out on youtube.There are plenty of familiar faces Christopher Lee, Murray Hamilton (Jaws) John Belushi playing the same guy he always plays, Lorraine Gary (Jaws) Ned Beatty (Deliverance) Dan Aykroyd (making his American feature film debut) Warren Oates (Wild Bunch) and John Candy but it feels like he has just shot a bunch of sketches together. We have no reason to care if any of the characters lived or died. Spielberg said "I'll spend the rest of my life disowning this movie."1941 grossed $31 million dollars at the domestic box office against a $35 million dollar budget. It was a modest hit though, as it made almost $95 million worldwide.

There comes a time in every new filmmaker's career when a few initial successes makes them feel invulnerable and leads them to believe that they can do anything and get away with it, only for their hubris to be mercilessly destroyed when their next project turns out to be an absolute disaster.1941 is an end product of Steven Spielberg's hubris that presents the now revered filmmaker tackling the genre of comedy after finding astonishing success with Jaws & Close Encounters, but this time he spectacularly fails at it. Arguably the worst film of his career, 1941 is nothing less than an eyesore.Set during the Second World War, the story of 1941 follows the hysteria that grips the Californians in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbour. As paranoia sets in & chaos erupts all over the state, civilians & soldiers prepare for the Japanese invasion, while a lost Japanese submarine sends its crew to scout out the madness.Directed by Steven Spielberg, 1941 finds the director trying way too hard in an effort to make the audience laugh but he only ends up making a mess of everything in the process. It appears as if Spielberg simply wanted to blow everything up and had his wish fulfilled with this big budget, big cast comedy that isn't even remotely funny.The film is an exaggeration of everything. All the set pieces are either destroyed or blown up by the end. People keep falling here n there throughout the movie. All the characters are hyperactive. Performances are equally crazy, and not in a good way. Still, its energetic camerawork, extravagant special effects & John Williams' score is a plus.On an overall scale, 1941 is a poorly conceived, awfully written & terribly executed example of blockbuster filmmaking and is a rare failure from a filmmaker who would later go on to become one of the greatest storytellers of all time. In retrospect, it's a bitter medicine that Spielberg needed, for 1941 didn't just knock some sense back into him and sober him up but also made him savour his future successes and not take his reputation for granted. A necessary dud.

(15%) What happens when you combine the writing talents of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (they both later penned the fantastic Back to the future movies), all-time great funny guys Dan Aykroyd, John Candy and John Belushi, and then you make out a big cheque to Steven Spielberg so he can blow the lot on the next big blockbuster? Well you get 1941, a truly awful movie. Everything is cranked up to 11 so much that it makes for a painful ordeal to watch at times, and with no main character to focus the story on (there is one in there somewhere I think) things just happen at what feels like pure random. The script is aimless, pointless, childish, crude and underdeveloped and the big set pieces just feel like a big waste of money. Belushi is hardly in the movie and was either drunk or stoned whenever he was, his part is pointless anyway, John Candy looks genuinely bored at times and he's hardly in it either. Dan Aykroyd is the only one with more than five lines, but his talent is hardly pushed to the limit, and most of the other cast members just goof around, shout, fight, dance and argue with each other, its really tiring to watch. And poor Christopher Lee probably wished he'd stuck to playing mute vampires rather than a pointless nazi part with only a few lame lines. A massive headache of a movie. Avoid at all costs.

Hysterical Californians prepare for a Japanese invasion in the days after Pearl Harbor.Can you believe this cast? Robert Stack (in excellent makeup), John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Candy, Christopher Lee, John Landis, Dick Miller, Nancy Allen, Eddie Deezen, Joe Flaherty and the list goes on. Even if this was not a good film (and it is) you should check it out to see a performance from some great actors.While the humor is relatively low (Kubrick allegedly called the film "great but not funny"), there are some nice moments featuring parodies of previous Spielberg films "Duel" and "Jaws". Great sense of humor, Mr. Spielberg.Today, the Zoot Suit Riot is probably best known as a song from Cherry Popping' Daddies. But it really occurred, and it has never looked better in fiction than it does in this film with a wonderfully long dance and fight sequence that is the centerpiece of the whole film.