1941

When I was a kid, I remember hearing about the movie 1941 and how it was supposedly an epic box office bomb. I had never seen it, so when it showed up in the PlutoTV rotation, I made a point of looking out for it to be able to watch it and make my own judgment as to how good the movie is or isn't.

As anyone who's watched enough World War II movies will know, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (hence the title), sending the US into World War II. Nobody in the US knew what Japan was going to do next, and since in theory Japan could have continued heading east, which would have sent them to the US Pacific coast, there was the potential for a lot of worry in the US west. That fear of what might happened is portrayed when, six days after Pearl Harbor, a woman goes for a swim in the Pacific, only for a submarine to surface right under her!

That sub is indeed a Japanese sub, captained by Cmdr. Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune), who has a German liaison officer on board with him, Capt. von Kleinschmidt (Christopher Lee). Mitamura had not taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor, and wanted to do his part for the Japanese war effort, which to him meant destroying something noteworthy in the US mainland. Fortunately, they've surfaced near Los Angeles, which is pretty noteworthy.

In the US, the country is quickly getting on a war footing. There are a lot of men in uniform, and nightclubs have been converted into USO clubs as part of the patriotic fervor. Those who can't serve for physical reasons or who have not been able to enlist are quickly becoming second-class citizens, as we see in the form of restaurant dishwasher Wally, who has a girlfriend Betty Douglas. She's joined the USO, and can no longer dance with Wally since men who aren't enlisted aren't allowed at the USO club. Not only that, but servicemen dining in the restaurant where Wally works, like Sgt. Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and his crew, treat the unenlisted like dirt.

As for Betty, she's lived in a seaside house out Santa Monica way with her parents (Ned Beatty and Lorraine Gary), and this would be a perfect place for the Americans to set up a lookout point to check for the possibility of Japanese subs or aircraft; indeed, Sgt. Tree wants the Douglases to set up an anti-aircraft battery on their property as part of the war effort.

Regarding aircraft, the Americans are also scrambling military planes to do patrol duty, with Capt. Wild Bill Kelso (John Belushi) being one of the pilots and getting a little too enthusiastic in doing his duty. As for the general in charge of security for the whole of the west coast, "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell (the one real person in the story, played by Robert Stack), he's busy at a screening of Dumbo and has no idea of the increasing mayhem happening around him in Los Angeles.

It's a bit of a sprawling synopsis, and indeed 1941 is a sprawling movie with a large cast and a lot happening that all more or less comes together by the finale. As another sign of how sprawling it is, director Steven Spielberg filmed it with an original cut that lasted nearly two and a half hours, although this was edited down to just under two hours for the theatrical release as well as the print that Pluto ran.

1941 as I said, is generally considered a famous bomb, although in real life it did make a modest profit. The reputation is more down to critical reception and the fact that it wasn't as successful as Spielberg's previous blockbusters, and it's not hard to see why the critics didn't rate it so highly. A lot of the humor is way too manic, with scenes going on way too long (the fight at the USO club) and plot threads feel like they're ignored if not abandoned. Several IMDb reviews I read compared 1941 to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but that movie had a coherent goal for all of the characters to be heading toward in the form of the money buried under the big W. 1941 doesn't have such a goal to resolve the plot, so even though a lot of main characters wind up together at the end, getting there feels a lot more disjointed.

But, as always, you may want to watch for yourself and form your own opinions.