1941 (1979)

Genre

Action | Comedy | War

Director

Steven Spielberg

Country

USA

Cast

Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Toshiro Mifune, Warren Oates, Robert Stack, Treat Williams, Nancy Allen, Eddie Deezen, Bobby Di Cicco, Dianne Kay, Slim Pickens, Michael McKean

Storyline

It's been six days since the attack on Pearl Harbor and hysterical Californians prepare for a Japanese invasion.

Opinion

I can't imagine how anyone, especially Steven Spielberg, can make something like this and call it 'spectacular'. He oughta be sarcastic, because "1941" is not spectacular and for the matter is not even a comedy.

For the first time I'm here saying that a storyline of a Spielberg movie is utterly stupid and ridiculous. And boring, let's not forget that, because it really is soporific and so not engaging. And it's wrong to call it 'storyline' because there is no actual story. It's just a series of random events of different groups of people that have only one thing in common: they all are living in 1941.

Now one could say that there is nothing wrong with a film made of a series of vignettes. There are some pretty good (or decent) films that don't have a real storyline, like Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask". What's the difference between that and this one? Something called humour. There is only immature humour that isn't even funny so basically there is no humour. At every single "joke" there was only one thing on my mind and it was "You have to be kidding me. This has to be a parody, it can't be a Spielberg movie."

And just to stay on theme with the shitty writing, the characters are terrible too. There is no character development whatsoever and there are too many of them you can't even have the luxury to fall asleep for 30 seconds - I'm sorry but that's the effect of the film - because you already aren't able to keep track of them all.

However, the most shocking aspect about "1941" is the cast. First, I cannot believe that all these fine actors agreed to make this film; second, how did they manage to do such an awful job? 

I am speechless.