1941 (1979)

Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Bobby Di Cicco, Dianne Kay, Ned Beatty, Tim Matheson, Nancy Allen, Treat Williams, John Belushi, Perry Lang, Toshirô Mifune, Christopher Lee, Dan Aykroyd, Lorraine Gary, Slim Pickens, Robert Stack, Wendie Jo Sperber, Murray Hamilton, Eddie Deezen, Warren Oates, Lionel Stander, John Candy, Frank McRae, Patti LuPone. [PG]

Spielberg’s oversized and overstuffed comedy of chaos on the West Coast, gripped by panic shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s screenplay never met a bigger-is-funnier gag it didn’t find hilarious—there are enough scenes of “comic destruction” to fill five Pink Panther movies—but it sits there as empty, scattershot spectacle, assaulting the senses instead of tickling the funny bone, and never establishing rhythm or momentum because Spielberg keeps interrupting the flow with cross-cuts among so many characters, stories and locations: a bumbling tank company, a Nazi on a Japanese sub, a Dumbo-loving general, a dish-washer trying to rescue his best girl from a lecherous soldier, a middle-aged Santa Monica couple with an anti-aircraft gun in their yard, a crazed fighter pilot named “Wild Bill” Kelso, a secretary who’s a sure thing at joining the Mile High Club, and on and on. It manages to be relentless and lead-footed at the same time, with good special effects and production design and a John Williams score, but all of that stuff is at the service of out-of-control nonsense with only a handful of real, starved laughs (shockingly, two of them come from Eddie Deezen!). So devoted to overkill, the movie actually keeps the explosions coming even as the end credits roll. Originally released a half-hour shorter than the “director’s cut” version seen today. Be on the lookout for lots of familiar faces in bit parts (Elisha Cook Jr., Michael McKean, Dick Miller, Dub Taylor, Penny Marshall, even Mickey Rourke in his film debut as a member of Aykroyd’s tank company).

42/100