1941

1941

To say Steven Spielberg’s “1941” lacks “pacing” is unfair. It has it, alright, but at the same rate: The film throws jokes at us one after another until we feel dizzy. This is an effort to make a blockbusting comedy that does not work pretty well because it is too eager to amaze us and so we need some rest. This movie is an affectionate, cheerfully careless mess that makes us like “Dr. Strangelove,” just a little bit more.

The story happens in the first days of the Second World War when rumors of Japanese invasion fill the air on the West Coast and there is real Japanese submarine somewhere off Long Beach. Californians are giddy with war fever; every young man wants to be in uniform; dance halls are packed to Glenn Miller’s music and up on Hollywood Boulevard zoot-suiters are rioting.

It seems some of this material was initially conceived by Spielberg as a series of set pieces and there is a part where they all come together in a dance hall: As identical triplets sing berserkly into microphones, sailors together with their ladies engage themselves in dance competitions which eventually degenerate into something between brawl and big dancing number in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

When Spielberg lets this sequence go on until it finds its own pace, it gives a zany effect. However, most other things in 1941 feel as if they have been chaotically fit together as though editors wanted to keep this stuff moving somehow or anyhow else. At long last, what remains of the movie disassembles itself completely from our eyes and ears which becomes filled with nonstop climaxes, screams, explosions, double takes, sight gags and ethnic jokes that do not make laugh anymore.

The closest thing to a major character here is John Belushi playing P-40 fighter pilot who goes up and down the coast hunting for Japanese until he finally crashes in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. The boulevard was also previously used for another commercial by military aircraft, using numerous special effects that must have been tough to create but as a result are so disordered that we feel more bewildered than amused. Except for a few highlights including an out-of-control ferris wheel, the special effects in “1941” seem haphazard: If we don’t understand what the key moments mean for plot development, can we say if they are funny?

This brings us to the real problem behind “1941”, I believe: This film was never realized at its most basic level of character and story. All sorts of things are happening, but it is often not clear why they need to happen or we do not know enough about them to care whether they live or die.

Everybody rushes around like people trapped in a Jack Davis drawing from Mad magazine. Comic performers waste their talents away. Belushi has barely 25 words through the whole film and is only asked to look hysterical, run like mad and be messy inside the Aeroplan cockpit. At one point he even does a bit duplicated from National Lampoon’s Animal House while running around with short legs; why not? Nobody thinks there should be anything else besides his regular character.

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