About as much fun as having your teeth extracted with a sledgehammer

Rating: 4/10 (24 June 2002)

This is easily Spielberg's worst film... loud and overbearing, obnoxious, devoid of intelligence (let alone plot), and unpleasant. There's not a single likeable character among the 3 dozen or so whom we are forced to follow around for 150 minutes-- as they scream at, hit, kick, and shoot at each other. I'm amazed that so many people on this site seem to love it-- I could sort of understand liking it if you're really into explosions and wanton destruction and that sort of thing, but even on that level, it is not remotely funny-- just big and loud and annoying.
"1941" can provoke a few guffaws of disbelief from me every half hour or so, in an "I can't believe that so many people in charge of so much expensive, destructive equipment are all so stupid" kind of way. But not in a "ha, ha" kind of way. If this movie were made during World War II, I can picture it being made by the Germans as a kind of anti-American propaganda film to demonstrate how dumb Americans were.

I remember seeing this in the theaters when I was 7 and being freaked out by all the noise and so-called "cartoon" violence, especially Ned Beatty gradually wrecking his home. Watching it again over 20 years later, I thought maybe it would grow on me, that I was just an impressionable kid...
Nope, I still don't see what's funny about a man losing everything he has, right before Christmas, with a war beginning, and a wife and 4 kids to take care of. Maybe if we really HATED Ned Beatty's character, okay, but we don't and we're not supposed to, so why is it funny again, Mr. Spielberg? I can at least understand why it's "funny" when asshole Treat Williams repeatedly gets kicked in the balls, splattered with egg, etc. (poetic justice, just desserts), but the house-collapsing humor eludes me.
I think this is why, aside from this board, the general consensus is that this film pretty much sucked. Comedies are not, by definition, depressing. And if Spielberg was aiming for black comedy, well, he pretty much missed the boat on that too.
Good effects and action sequences? Yes. But humorous? No.