1941: Attempt to create a madcap war spoof becomes Spielberg's Folly

If we look at every current successful Hollywood director's filmography, we are bound to find several failed projects or "could have been contender" films that, for some reason or another, failed both critically and popularly at the box office.

Considering how influential, how criticically acclaimed and how successful Steven Spielberg has been ever since 1975's Jaws became the granddaddy of the BIG SUMMER FILMS, it's hard to work one's mind around the fact that the young wunderkind who batted three successful films out of the ballpark between 1974 and 1977 (The Sugarland Express, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) could take such a creative stumble by making a slapstick World War II comedy such as 1941.

Because I only became a Spielberg aficionado after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark (which was released two years later), 1941 was the kind of movie that easily flew under my teenage self's radar.  Its advertised "stars" were John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, two of Saturday Night Live's biggest stars; however, since I wasn't then a fan of that show, I wasn't as enthused by their appearance in what many people were already calling a frantic, confusing and often off-putting spoof about hysterical Southern Californians suffering a bad case of war jitters less than a week after Pearl Harbor.

Though co-writers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis (who would later go on to direct Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump) were inspired by several real-life incidents which occurred in the Los Angeles area during 1942 and throughout the rest of the war, the only plausible things about Spielberg's attempt to make a madcap World War II flick are the presence of Gen. Joseph Stillwell (Robert Stack) in the Los Angeles area and the notion that Japanese submarines were patrolling the sea lanes off the West Coast of the U.S. in early December 1941.

 
The movie (which starts with a hysterically funny reference to Jaws) deals with several overlapping stories, the first one involving a Japanese sub commander (Toshiro Mifune) who is determined to undermine American morale by attacking Hollywood with his I-boat.  The German naval observer (Christopher Lee) thinks this is a bad idea, and as the Japanese plan to attack Hollywood descends farther down the depths of zaniness, he never warms up to it.
 
Another story thread centers on Wally Stephens (Bobby Di Cicco), a young ex-con who gets fired from his short-order cook job at a small diner because he's focusing more on a jitterbug contest he wants to attend with the fetching Betty Douglas (Dianne Kay of Eight is Enough). 

His plans, however, are made more difficult by the emnity of a GI named Stretch (Treat Williams) on whose uniform he spilled some eggs and by the fact that Betty's dad Ward, (Ned Beatty) doesn't approve of a trouble-prone kid dating his daughter.

And yet another thread is that of Army Capt. Louis Birkhead (Tim Matheson), one of Stillwell's aides and a former flight school cadet who washed out and was transferred to a desk job.  Essentially Animal House's Otter in an Army uniform, Birkhead is a bit of a Lothario who has made it his mission in life to have sex with Donna Stratton (Nancy Allen), a woman who won't give Birkhead the time of day, much less have sex with him - unless she's aboard a plane...in flight. 

 The one thread of 1941 which looked like the unifying one concerns Capt. Wild Bill Kelso (John Belushi), a cartoonish buffoon who happens to be a cross between one of John Wayne's Flying Tigers squadron mates and some of Belushi's own rowdier Saturday Night Live characters.  Given that he and Dan Aykroyd get top billing and appear on the DVD cover, you'd think 1941 would focus a lot on him and his interactions with the others in this dizzying and sometimes bewildering picture.

Sadly, Wild Bill's antics, while funny and definitely worthy of Belushi's casting, are very few and scattered like shotgun pellets all over the movie. 

Ditto for Aykroyd, whose Sgt. Tree is also very funny whenever he has a cameo in 1941.

Unfortunately, Spielberg, Gale, Zemeckis and Milus went overboard in cramming so many "Can you top this?" visual gags and inside jokes that they lost sight of a movie's most important element - a story or character that will attract and hold an audience's attention.  1941, in a sense, is as though some frat kids got access to a studio (or two's) financial department, got drunk on beer and (taking a cue from The Little Rascals) said, "Let's put on a show!"

Though 1941 isn't as unwatchable as "serious critics" said it was when it was released in late 1979, the movie is too baroque in structure and tends to get noisier and frantic as  the amalgam of stories converges to its frenzied end.  It does have some funny bits, and the scene at the USO Club, where Wally plans to win the Jitterbug Contest, shows us what a more disciplined Spielberg could have done with a better script for his World War II comedy.

Though I'm giving this film a two-star rating, I'm "awarding" it a Yes recommendation because of its "curio" standing in the Spielberg filmography. Watch carefully for a scene involving Christopher Lee, Toshiro Mifune and Slim Pickens; it features a gag that failed to get any laughs in 1941 but worked rather well in Spielberg's next film.