1941

I have absolutely no idea why I ever came to buy this movie. I know it happened some time in the past year, and for some amount under $5, but I really do not know what was going through my head when I decided to buy it. It's a 1979 Spielberg comedy set in Los Angeles at the outset of World War II. Three factors prevent this movie from being good: its age, its generic blandness, and its length. We'll start with the first one. Now, I'm not of the opinion that an old movie can't be a good movie, but when it comes to comedies, I often balk at some of the "classics." Animal House? Didn't do it for me. Porky's? Same. Caddyshack? Even that one, I fear, holds no special place in my heart. But why should any of these movies? They're products of my parents' generation, and not my own. there are still plenty of comedies from the late '70s and early '80s that I do enjoy, however; Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Airplane, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Blazing Saddles are just a few movies from the same era which I do enjoy. So what's all of this got to do with liking or not liking a movie? Let's bring in the issue of generic blandness. 1941 contained a slew of jokes based on, essentially, three types of humor: slapstick, miscommunication, and sex jokes. The slapstick aspect, especially, left me shaking my head. It's just not that funny to see guys getting clonked in the head and falling over in scene after scene. And this movie pulled out every single cliche. At one point, a man was fired upon by several machine guns, and he danced and jumped wildly to dodge the bullets, escaping unscathed. Another four-minutes were occupied by the characters engaging in dace floor hijinks while a band played swing music. And of course, at plenty of separate points, a heavy object was clumsily handled and a bunch of architecture was destroyed as a result. There was very little creativity put into the movie's jokes. With the exception of Fast Times, of which I have no explanation for my being a fan, all of this era's comedies that I previously mentioned enjoying had something in common: originality. Blazing Saddles was a satire that lampooned both racism and westerns. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was flat-out absurd and rife with famous and quotable dialogue. And Airplane, though teeming with groaners, never missed a chance to make any sort of pun or satirical reference; it was the original "spoof" movie. But nothing in 1941 seemed original in the least bit. It more or less seemed like Animal House set during wartime instead of college. Lastly, we come to the movie's length of two and a half hours. Why is it necessary for any comedy to be two and a half hours long? My biggest peeve of the last few years with comedies has been their increasing in length. Judd Apatow is someone who I respect, but cannot stand lately because it seems like every movie he makes is longer than the last one by twenty minutes. Going over some of my favorite comedies of the past 15 years, I can think of only one that even approaches two hours in length: Superbad. The others fall gracefully between 90 and 105 minutes in length. 1941 took 146 such minutes to finish, wearing out its welcome by the better part of an hour. I guess bitching about running times will get me nowhere, so I apologize for being a crotchety old man about them. There just aren't a ton of positive things to say about 1941, a critically panned movie from long before my time that I never should have purchased at all.