1941 (1979)

Sheer craziness
This movie has many of my favourite comedic actors such as Dan Ackroyd and John Candy. It also has the great Toshiro Mifune who starred in the great Akira Kurosawa classics. There is no real plot to speak of. It is simply a series of comedic sketches loosely tied together. The whole movie seems to make fun of the old Japan - US rivalry and the silliness this paranoia instilled in the population (remember the internment camps?). The film is silly and you have to enjoy silliness (like me) if you're going to like it.

Good film: bad DVD
Spielberg's blockbuster comedy 1941 never really caught on in the US and was better received in other parts of the world. The basic plot of the movie revolves around a real incident which actually took place in early 1942 instead of Christmas 1941. It involved a reported sighting of Japanese aircraft over Los Angeles and led to pandemonium and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition being fired into the night sky for nothing. Spielberg and his writers take this as a springboard for some serious slapstick and special effects on a grand scale.

Featuring John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Robert Stack and Warren Oates, the cast is very strong and topped off with the hilarious combination of Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee as a Japanese-speaking sub commander and a German-speaking Kriegsmarine officer who seem to either understand each other or not, depending on your take. The support cast is all good though there are a few dull moments in the story line.

This film, more than any other by Spielberg, seems to have copped a merciless bagging over the years, probably because of its theme. It is mass hysteria evolving into huge street fights, aerial dog fights and land and sea gun fights which might not be everyone's cup of tea but in this day and age it is particularly relevant and perhaps would be more widely appreciated. On the other hand, it was made during the Cold War and it wasn't as appealing as "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!", which itself would have been a good film but for a terrible ending.

Given how nervous the world is today, it might be a good time to show it again.

The DVD is terrible. It is optimised for 4:3 letterbox so those with widescreen TVs get a tiny 2.35:1 picture which is okay if you can see it. Zooming your TV makes it look worse. The audio quality is pretty poor and there are some parts which are quite noticeably distorted. This is a good film which deserves to be re-released for new TVs or even HD.

Good film: bad DVD
Spielberg's blockbuster comedy 1941 never really caught on in the US and was better received in other parts of the world. The basic plot of the movie revolves around a real incident which actually took place in early 1942 instead of Christmas 1941. It involved a reported sighting of Japanese aircraft over Los Angeles and led to pandemonium and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition being fired into the night sky for nothing. Spielberg and his writers take this as a springboard for some serious slapstick and special effects on a grand scale.

Featuring John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Robert Stack and Warren Oates, the cast is very strong and topped off with the hilarious combination of Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee as a Japanese-speaking sub commander and a German-speaking Kriegsmarine officer who seem to either understand each other or not, depending on your take. The support cast is all good though there are a few dull moments in the story line.

This film, more than any other by Spielberg, seems to have copped a merciless bagging over the years, probably because of its theme. It is mass hysteria evolving into huge street fights, aerial dog fights and land and sea gun fights which might not be everyone's cup of tea but in this day and age it is particularly relevant and perhaps would be more widely appreciated. On the other hand, it was made during the Cold War and it wasn't as appealing as "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!", which itself would have been a good film but for a terrible ending.

Given how nervous the world is today, it might be a good time to show it again.

The DVD is terrible. It is optimised for 4:3 letterbox so those with widescreen TVs get a tiny 2.35:1 picture which is okay if you can see it. Zooming your TV makes it look worse. The audio quality is pretty poor and there are some parts which are quite noticeably distorted. This is a good film which deserves to be re-released for new TVs or even HD.