1941
Plot in a Nutshell
Steven Spielberg’s much-maligned 1979 flop megacomedy about various Los Angeles residents running amok in the days following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Thoughts
There’s a great moment in 1941 where a pair of Army privates are riding inside a tank as it cuts a swath of destruction through a series of Los Angeles warehouses. Frank McRae plays Pvt. Jones, who all through the movie has been putting up with racist comments from Pvt. Foley, a good ol’ boy played by John Candy. At one point, a bag of flour gets dumped over Pvt. Jones’ head, and then, a few seconds later, Pvt. Foley gets a faceful of black exhaust. So now the black guy is “white” and the white guy’s “black.” They catch sight of each other, point their finger in the other’s face, and start laughing uproariously. And then an offscreen voice chimes in: “Hey, Foley! You’d better step to the back of the tank!”
Because it’s the only real flop Steven Spielberg ever made (or at least the only one that’s commonly referred to as a flop as opposed to a mere “underperformer” like A.I., Always, or The Terminal), there’s a stigma that surrounds 1941 to this very day: according to conventional wisdom, it’s the noisy, overproduced, unfunny comedy that gave Spielberg the boy wonder a dose of humility just when he needed it most.
Phooey, I say. 1941 is definitely noisy, and you could look at scenes like the one where the Ferris wheel comes loose from its couplings and starts rolling through an amusement park or the final gag where Ned Beatty’s house falls into the sea, and argue that if someone had decided there wasn’t enough money in the budget for such extravagances, those scenes wouldn’t have been missed.
But unfunny? Hardly. 1941 is one of the most raucous depictions of the insanity roiling deep within the American character since the heyday of Preston Sturges. (And the series of hilarious films that Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale wrote between 1978 and 1985—I Wanna Hold Your Hand, 1941, Used Cars, and Back to the Future—represent one of the most inspired screenwriting streaks since Sturges’ charmed run in the early ’40s.)
That racial flip-flop between Candy and McRae is only one small example of the topsy-turvy reversals that Spielberg sets off in this movie, like a string of Fourth of July firecrackers. Everyone in 1941 has gone just a little bit insane: John Belushi’s crazed pilot Wild Bill Kelso, smashing open Coke bottles on the side of his plane and casually blowing up gas stations, is just the most obvious mental patient. Just look at Bobby DiCicco and Jordan Brian working in the diner kitchen, wantonly throwing dishes back and forth, slopping coffee and pancake batter all over the stove, too busy dancing to the Glenn Miller music on the radio to care about neatness. Or “khaki-wacky” Nancy Allen, who has such a plane fetish that just being inside the cockpit makes her ready to drop her panties. Or Ned Beatty, who’s willing to destroy his house if it means keeping the Japs from climbing ashore. You know that frenetic USO jitterbug scene from Sturges’ The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek? 1941 tries to sustain that energy for two and a half hours.
And it throws in an astonishing jitterbug scene too—the justly celebrated USO sequence, with Treat Williams’ psychopathic soldier stalking Bobby DiCicco across a crowded dancefloor (while the lovestruck Wendie Jo Sperber stalks him) is a jaw-dropping feat of physical and cinematic choreography. We’ll probably never see the likes of 1941 again in this age of CGI: why try astonishing audiences by doing something for real anymore—blowing up a building or flying a plane down Main Street when you can simulate it on a computer?
Maybe that’s why those flops of the late ’70s and early ’80s—1941, One From the Heart, Heaven’s Gate, Sorcerer—are so notorious, so especially despised, when much more expensive and artistically bankrupt recent box-office failures never get taken to task. If you don’t like a movie like 1941, the waste seems so much more tactile—all that money lavished on all those enormous sets and explosions and period props and period costumes! Whereas with a recent stinker like... oh, say, Van Helsing, you’re always aware, at least subconsciously, that everything onscreen is just a bunch of pixels.
How can you get irate over expenses as abstract as that? Or at money that disappears as painlessly as the files from your computer’s desktop trash can?
RATING: 4.5/5
I COULD NEVER BE YOUR WOMAN
Plot in a Nutshell
Amy Heckerling’s woefully mismarketed straight-to-DVD romantic comedy starring Michelle Pfeiffer as the producer of a TV sitcom who begins a relationship with the significantly younger actor who’s just joined the cast of her show.
Thoughts
I was persuaded to check this one out after listening to the most recent episode of the Show Me Your Titles podcast, which devoted the entire 50 minutes to discussing Amy Heckerling’s career and bemoaning the series of boneheaded decisions that kept this eminently marketable mainstream comedy from ever playing movie theatres. It was only the second time in the show’s history that hosts Erin Donovan and Cathy De La Cruz devoted an entire episode to one movie—and since the other movie that got this treatment was 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, I sat up and took notice.
I was a little less impressed by I Could Never Be Your Woman than Donovan and De La Cruz, but the lack of faith that the studio had in this project, despite its tremendously appealing leads and Heckerling’s solid comedy track record (you’d think the woman who made Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless would get a lifetime Hollywood pass), seems like evidence of a depressing studio bias against movies made from the point of view of women in their 40s and 50s.
And despite some sitcommy dialogue, some pat romantic-comedy situations, and the dubious choice to have running commentary on the action provided by Mother Nature (and to cast Tracey Ullman, a comic who’s always grated on me, in the role), Heckerling’s portrait of a city where everyone is desperately trying to pretend they are younger than they actually are rings 100 percent true. Pfeiffer’s character works on a TV show where 30-year-olds play high school students, where the slightly older producers and writers scour teen magazines for slang (ignoring the fact that the people who write those magazines are probably just as old as they are), where plastic surgery is at once commonplace and the subject of vicious gossip.
Plus, the relationship between Pfeiffer and Rudd is genuinely sweet—this is the rare romantic comedy where the two lovers really do seem to enjoy each other’s company. Their age difference is a big obstacle for Pfeiffer, but according to the logic of the script, Rudd is so good at making her laugh that he wears down her defences. It’s lucky, then, that Rudd is genuinely funny in a potentially cloying role. (I laughed out loud at the moment where a bitchy production assistant tells Rudd that there have been complaints that his performance on the show is too broad—whereupon Rudd responds with a hilariously broad spit-take.)
This isn’t a particularly graceful movie. It’s full of corner-cutting montages and musical cues, and it’s the kind of movie where the feminist messages are delivered in speeches instead of simply emerging from the situations and the way the characters interrelate. But you do feel like this script came from Heckerling’s heart, that she’s commenting on things that she’s seen first-hand, and that she genuinely wants to put a few more strong, intelligent female characters onscreen. (I also liked her handling of Pfeiffer’s daughter, played by Saorsie Ronan from Atonement, a burgeoning feminist who’s achingly clueless about how to talk to the boy she has a crush on.)
Plus, it takes its title from that great White Town song, which I haven’t thought about in years and was happy to be reminded of. In fact, let’s watch the video together, shall we?
RATING: 3/5
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