Funny undisciplined nonsense

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2014)

Spielberg cranks things up to about a 14 out of 10, with this overstuffed lunacy about California thrown into hysterics at the notion of a Japanese attack. This gargantuan piece of wretched excess was Spielberg's grand blunder, a director's ego and complete creative control ('creative control' are two words at such odds to what's on screen) that turned a production into a nightmare and doesn't show the slightest sign of discipline. The result is a fantastic mess, that, so help me, I found funny. It's a shapeless film, with characters so broad, Spielberg can barely contain them in the frame and so relentless and aggressive in its destructive zany comedy, that you'll have either submitted to these shenanigans or have a giant question mark stamped onto your face while watching. Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones was an uncredited creative assistant and seeing how this is basically a live action madcap cartoon, his influence is not surprising and he also was put in charge of a runaway torpedo sequence, that was never filmed. Belushi's character feels like a weird afterthought and forced into this cluttered series of episodic events. While the ice cold reception 1941 received was a sobering experience for the director, its go for broke mayhem style of filmmaking is a real sight to behold. The visuals are fantastic, including some of the best model work, which helped add a troubling amount of shooting days and expense to an already expensive film - and the choreography of numerous scenes involving large crowds are technical marvels. Ambition and ego collide to make one of the great missteps in film history and the result is a glorious mess.