Delayed Reaction: 1941

Premise: A wacky comedy about American panic as the Japanese attempt an attack on the West Coast.

This is a peculiar movie; seen as one of the great "heat checks" in movie history. Stephen Spielberg was coming off the massive success of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So, he follows those up with 1941: a boisterous WWII epic comedy. Think about that. He masters the summer thriller. Moves in a new direction with a Sci-Fi mystery. Then with 1941, he tries to cover the entire bingo board of genres. Filmmakers rarely try such wild swings with their early movies, and Spielberg was already directing at the highest level. That's a bravado move.

1941 wasn't a failure. It actually did fine at the box office. It just wasn't a hit the way those earlier movies were. Also, box offices are slow to respond sometimes. People were going to see 1941 because they trusted Spielberg's brand. Had he followed 1941 up with something of equally mediocre quality, I doubt that would've been a success too.

Instead, his next movie was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg, while never disowning 1941, has owned the mistakes made with that movie. The big takeaway is that he didn't make it very funny. Looking at his career that last four decades, straight-comedy isn't something he's tried again. It's hard to say if 1941 is just an odd hiccup in his career, or if he really did learn something from it. Looking at his string of hits after that (Raiders, E.T., Temple of Doom, The Color Purple), he seemed to learn whatever lessons he needed to.

I should probably talk about the movie, at least a little.

I didn't like it. I didn't find it funny. It makes the mistake of thinking that going bigger or louder can substitute for a good punchline. There was too much going on that I didn't care about. I'm not even sure which characters I was supposed to like. It kept throwing more and more at the plot like it was trying to beat the audience down by submission. A lot of the actual humor ages poorly, but I can't hold the movie that accountable for that.

It's a shame, because this is a great cast. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in this post SNL, pre-Blues Brothers gold period. A young John Candy. Hell, it even has Japanese legend Toshiro Mifune.

If nothing else, it's nice to add this piece to the Spielberg puzzle. I have so little of his filmography left to catch up on.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend