1941 (1979)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1979
	Director: Steven Spielberg (E.T., Jaws, Ready Player One)
	Actors: John Belushi (Blues Brothers), Dan Aykroyd (Ghostbusters), Treat Williams. Christopher Lee (The Wicker Man, The Lord of the Rings), Nancy Allen (Robocop)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy, War
	Conditions of visioning: 13.09.2019, VOD, 40" TV screen
Synopsis: A few days after the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan on the USA, panic strikes the west coast. Conscripts as well as civilians struggle to keep a normal life while all around madness grows.
Review: That's really a good description for this movie: mad. None of the characters (and there are tons of them) behave like a normal person would, everything is exaggerated down to the latest details in the background. It's a happy mess. Happy and very noisy. In fact a vast majority of the dialogs is delivered by the actors shouting over other actors, background noise or the soundtrack. The end credits summarize that well: we see the name of many known actors next to a scene where they scream. Shouting jokes doesn't make them more funny. I can't tell if this is deliberate from Spielberg, maybe as an homage to the previous generation of comedies that were a bit like that. This is one of his less successful movies. I do like the story a lot, an exaggeration of the craziness of those times of war. The characters are well-written and played by many great actors. It is just that the constant visual and acoustic noise is quickly tiresome. Some breaks would have been welcome, especially in a 2-hour long movie. The movie contains iconic moments: the girl excited by planes, the scenes with the Japanese sub-marine especially with Sir Christopher Lee, the canon shooting through the house at the end, the quid-pro-quos when the whole city of Los Angeles believes that a single Japanese plane is above them, and any scene with John Belushi. I wouldn't say that it is a bad movie, again it just is tiresome to watch in spite of many good moments.
Rating: 5 /10