Dashed Expectations

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2004)

(SPOILERS AHEAD)
Excitement and expectations were high about "1941" when it went into production for Xmas 1979 release.
It would be Spielberg's newest film after the blockbusters "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." And it would be Spielberg's first comedy: an all-star spectacular in the "Mad, Mad, World" tradition about Los Angeles coastal panic when a Japanese submarine surfaces off the coast soon after Pearl Harbor.
Spielberg had cast the two funniest leads from the blockbuster "National Lampoon's Animal House": John Belushi (Bluto) and Tim Matheson (Otter).

Belushi's Saturday Night Live buddy Dan Ackroyd agreed to make his major film debut. The two were extra hot on TV, records, and concert stages as "the Blues Brothers" and would make that movie after "1941."

These key elements were surrounded by an all-star cast that included such iconic greats as Toshiro Mifune (as the Japanese officer whose submarine surfaces off Santa Monica), Christopher Lee (as a Nazi officer on board the sub), Slim Pickens (from "Dr. Strangelove" and doing a reprise of one of his scenes from that film in this one), "Jaws" cast members Murray Hamilton (the Mayor in Jaws) and Lorraine Gary (Mrs. Brody in Jaws) and Susan Backlinie (first shark meal in Jaws) and even Laverne, Lenny, and Squiggy from "Laverne and Shirley." Plus John Candy in an early role. And Warren Oates. And Robert Stack as General Vinegar Joe Stilwell, tearing up at "Dumbo" in a Hollywood Blvd. theater as riots rage outside.

All systems were "go" for the biggest and funniest comedy epic of all time -- and it flopped.
Why? Simple reason: not funny. Slightly more complex reason: the irritatingly huge budget buried everg gag under a ton of extras and effects ("Animal House" had been ten times funnier on a 1/10th of the budget.)
Look more carefully, though. Other problems. The script is haywire and Spielberg uses his cast wrong. The hilarious Belushi, Ackroyd, and Matheson are kept apart from each other for the whole movie, and none of them get that much screen time even by themselves.
Instead, Spielberg insanely wastes much more footage on near-unknown Bobby DeCiccio and not-terribly-funny Treat Williams, Dianne Kay, and Wendie Jo Sperber in the film's worst subplot: about a romantic quadrangle involving two civilian lovers, the near-rapist soldier buly who comes between them, and the big mama who saves them all. Not funny.
Incredibly, every time "1941" gets some comic momentum going with Belushi or Ackroyd or Matheson (seducing sultry Nancy Allen while flying a plane he can't fly because that's the only way she gets hot), he cuts back to the extremely boring and irritating nobodies in the love quadrangle. Why?
The film simply takes forever getting started, and bogs down in a long USO dance hall dance-fight-riot in downtown LA.
Then, a miracle: the last half hour is pretty funny, thanks to these visually spectcular and funny Spielbergian set-pieces:
1. Belushi chasing Matheson and Allen in planes down a wonderfully mintaturized Hollywood Boulevard at night, with Xmas decorations all over the street.
2. Coastal homeowner Ned Beatty trying to open fire on a Japanese submarine using the anti-aircraft gun near his house -- crashing it through his house, over and over, in a live-action Bugs Bunny cartoon.
3. At Pacific Ocean Amusement park and ocean pier at the Santa Monica ocean, a plane, a tank, a motorcycle, a Ferris Wheel, the Mayor from Jaws, a crummy comedy actor named Eddie Deezen and a funny ventriloquist's dummy all come together for a Spielbergian riot of special effects and well-timed comedy set to exciting John Williams music.
Spielberg finally finds his mojo for these last scenes, and then lets the movie peter down in an overlong final scene to a ridiculously heavy-handed final gag.
But wait: stick around for the credit sequence, in which Spielberg reveals what REALLY went wrong. The credits show every single member of the all-star cast, one after the other, SCREAMING. (With occasional calm remarks by some cast members as punctuation.) Spielberg reveals his essential lack of humor with his own final credits.
Spielberg's enemies smacked him hard over his failure, and he came back two years later with the tight, exciting blockbuster "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to make up for it. He's been OK ever since.
But "1941" was something else.
P.S. I like John Williams rousing "1941" overture. THIS should have been the theme for Indiana Jones.