CinemaClown 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.

The_Film_Cricket I suppose that every great director has to have at least one movie that tests the patience of the audience. For Spielberg, that was a comedy misfire known simply as 1941. Perched uncomfortably in his filmography between Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was a bizarre free-for-all that started at level 10 and never never dropped for a moment. This was a noisy, relentless, overbearing bit of comedy tripe so obnoxious that Spielberg would later claim that audience members at the first test screening were holding their hands over their ears.Set amid the paranoia of the Pearl Harbor attacks, the focuses a group of misfits in Southern California, 1941 doesn't really have a plot structure so much as a gaggle of insane characters let loose on each other to do apparently whatever they like within the span of 90 minutes. The problem, I discovered, is that none of the comedy sticks. It's just a series of nutty people allowed to say and do whatever they please in a sort of war-time version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The comic invention is to gather together all sorts of wonderful actors, both serious and comic, and let them run around like idiots and make a lot of noise. This, a comedy does not make.Comedy has to have rules, it has to have structure, it has to have set up and payoff. Even the Marx Brothers' brand on insanity was written and rewritten, rehearsed and re-rehearsed. It was perfected down to the last detail so it seemed to come from their guts. That's not the case here.The movie has a cult status that I don't understand. I sat stone-faced through this whole production. Not just stone-faced, but also frustrated as I watch a bilious amounts of comic invention burn on the screen. It is one of those movies where you sense that it might have been funny in the moment, on the set, or in the screen writing sessions. But when you're sitting there watching joke after joke fall over and die, you are left with the inevitable question, "what's the point of all this?"

chaz7227 I just love this movie so many great scenes with so many classic actors... I am not sure why this great movie is so underrated & so unappreciated it is truly one of the greatest movies to come out of 1979 as I consider it one of the greatest comedies of the 80's & of all time...Just look at some of the individual scenes on their own...The great Jaws opening spoof... John Belushi is incredible with both of his characters...Dan Aykroyd and John Candy fantastic especially later in the tank scene...Timothy Stack, Treat Williams, and Nancy Williams all great...Warren Oats and Robert Stack both great...Every scene with Slim Pickens just classic the Submarine scenes some of the best pure gut laughter the spoof of Dr. Strangelove great stuff...And the dummy just hilarious my god the dummies right...If you don't laugh at this wonderful film you are dead inside...Steven deserves some recognition for this well directed film!!!

Adam Peters (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.