Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

slightlymad22 Continuing my plan to watch every Steven Spielberg movie in order, I come to 1941.Spielberg totally gets this one wrong!! He even spoofs Jaws, right down to Susan Backlinie (Chrissie Watkins) reprising her role as the first victim in Jaws by playing a girl who goes skinny dipping at the beginning of this film. And whilst she has a nice bum, its in poor taste. You can check it out on youtube.There are plenty of familiar faces Christopher Lee, Murray Hamilton (Jaws) John Belushi playing the same guy he always plays, Lorraine Gary (Jaws) Ned Beatty (Deliverance) Dan Aykroyd (making his American feature film debut) Warren Oates (Wild Bunch) and John Candy but it feels like he has just shot a bunch of sketches together. We have no reason to care if any of the characters lived or died. Spielberg said "I'll spend the rest of my life disowning this movie."1941 grossed $31 million dollars at the domestic box office against a $35 million dollar budget. It was a modest hit though, as it made almost $95 million worldwide.

ejonconrad I remember really looking forward to this movie when it came out. It was hyped like crazy and it starred pretty much everyone I thought was funny at the time. I also remember sitting there trying to will myself to laugh as it sunk in what a terrible movie it was.I recently re-watched it, and it's even worse than I remembered, because even the stuff that was mildly entertaining 40 years ago hasn't aged well.Where to start? One word: cocaine. That's the only thing that can possibly explain the frenetic misfire that is this movie. First of all, there's an absurd number of characters in an absurd number of subplots. On top of that, the subplots have bizarre details thrown in. For example, Treat Williams' "hilarious rapist" (rape is funny, right?) character has a weird phobia of eggs. What does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing.The movie relies excessively on Three Stooges-style spit takes and prat falls. There's also a lot of screaming: "Japs!", "Invasion!", "Someone help! (this guy is trying to rape me)".This time, I watched the extended version, and even at 2 1/2 hours (!!), it seemed like a lot of stuff was left out. A couple of the threads are wrung out in excruciating details while others seem to have missing chunks. There's a big build up to Warren Oats' appearance, but then it just comes and goes. Did he have more scenes on the cutting room floor? One guy has a ventriloquist's dummy for....some reason. Did they plan to do something more with it? like, something funny? How exactly did John Belushi end up flying around alone "looking for Japs"? So much of the humor is badly misplaced. I mentioned the attempted rape. We're not talking Brutus chasing Olive oil. We're talking Treat Williams dragging a woman under a car as she screams for help - and this is basically played for laughs, with another woman disappointed he's not trying to rape her. Also, the big fight is clearly supposed to be the zoot suit riots (which actually happened in 1943). There was absolutely nothing funny about those. Soldiers and white civilians were straight up assaulting Mexican-American youths while the authorities looked the other way, or even joined in. A solid half of the movie is devoted to destruction of property. In fact, I'm pretty sure Spielberg started with a list of who he wanted in the move and another list of the things he wanted to destroy and just sort of wrote the movie around them. All this destruction was impressive when the movie was made, but now the whole thing literally looks like a Universal Studios tour.I can't think of another example of this much talent being wasted in a single movie. There was all the hot comic talent at the time: Dan Ackroyd, John Candy, John Belushi, Tim Matheson, etc, and classic stars like Slim Pickens, Christopher Lee, and Japanese star Toshiro Mifune, and lots of other big names at the time, like Nancy Allen and Treat Williams. Not to mention a few characters recycled form Spielberg's other movies. Everyone was tripping over themselves to be in a Spielberg movie. It took real work for that cast of characters to turn in something this awful.Weirdly, John Williams' score is quite good. Too bad it wasn't used for a better movie.

maxtshea Okay all you One-Star Wallys, you Gloomy Guses, you Debbie Downers, I'm going to explain this for the umpty-umpth time in thirty-five years: "1941" is slapstick comedy. It's a big, noisy mess. It's warped fun and nothing more. "1941" is not -- I repeat NOT -- your mature sophisti-comedy with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn with pithy nuances and lessons for the heart. You've got Eddie Deezen on a Ferris wheel, Ned Beatty on an artillery cannon, John Belushi on a P-40 Tomahawk, and Bobby Di Cicco on the make! You've got Slim Pickens reprising Major Kong, Robert Stack as a resolute General Stillwell, and Lorraine Gary as an hysterical housewife. There are soldiers, sailor, zoot-suiters, submarines, tanks, toilet jokes, paint factories, machine guns, rockets, explosions, and wild-eyed screaming close-ups. There's John Williams' bombastic orchestral score, there's boogie-woogie, swing, and close-harmony. There are rude ethnic stereotypes and sophomoric sex jokes. There are kicks in the shins and punches in the nose. There is no subtlety. None. If you're looking for any of that Woody Allen stuff, you might as well watch the Three Stooges for the character development and "Hamlet" for the pie fight. If you took "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" and siphoned off the clever plot, you might get something like "1941." "1941" retains the riotous excitement Spielberg brought us with "Sugarland Express," but burns off the sorrow of "Sugarland," leaving pure intoxicated joy!I don't advocate substances either way, but you can still follow "1941" no matter how stoned or drunk you are. You will love it if you just want to take your mind off your troubles for a couple of hours. Just don't try to take it to film school, you'll only whine and fuss.

gavin6942 Hysterical Californians prepare for a Japanese invasion in the days after Pearl Harbor.Can you believe this cast? Robert Stack (in excellent makeup), John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Candy, Christopher Lee, John Landis, Dick Miller, Nancy Allen, Eddie Deezen, Joe Flaherty and the list goes on. Even if this was not a good film (and it is) you should check it out to see a performance from some great actors.While the humor is relatively low (Kubrick allegedly called the film "great but not funny"), there are some nice moments featuring parodies of previous Spielberg films "Duel" and "Jaws". Great sense of humor, Mr. Spielberg.Today, the Zoot Suit Riot is probably best known as a song from Cherry Popping' Daddies. But it really occurred, and it has never looked better in fiction than it does in this film with a wonderfully long dance and fight sequence that is the centerpiece of the whole film.