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Consider the characters. Despite their top billing, Aykroyd doesn’t figure much into the story as a boneheaded motor pool tech, and Belushi isn’t asked to do much more than grunt and twitch his way through what is essentially the same character he played in Animal House, but as a mentally divergent fighter pilot. Veteran actor Ned Beatty appears as a squirrely seaside homeowner with a submarine problem, and Treat Williams is a horny serviceman whose entire reason for being is because the screenwriters thought rapists are people, too. There are a lot more people in this movie, but none of them really mean anything or have much function other than to run around screaming, trying to have sex with each other and making forced ethnic jokes whenever better dialogue was unavailable. Everyone is a walking punch line, but we’re never sure what the joke is.

Beatty’s nattering wife won’t tolerate guns in the house, so guess what ends up in her house before the end of the movie, and guess how big it is? Williams hates eggs, so guess what he ends up face down in before the end of the film? Nancy Allen likes to have sex in planes, so guess what her entire character arc revolves around? And by the way, what the hell does any of this have to do with the war? 1941 is a series of half-baked set pieces and lowest common denominator gags that would barely have amused me when I was ten. Even John Williams’ trademark brass happy score feels lazy, chugging inevitably and obliviously along as though we’re all having a nice time, except we’re just NOT.

I wish there was a coherent plot, or any logical sequence of events that I could specifically point to as flaws, but the absence of these things happens to BE the film’s weakest point. With such a legendary director, a talented cast, a more than ample budget and Oscar-nominated special effects, you’d think 1941 would have amounted to more than this. Instead, what it feels like is the kind of reckless, heedless piece of garbage a man makes when he’s got so much juice that nobody can stop him from making whatever movie he wants. Call this Spielberg’s Sucker Punch if you want, because it’s that bad. It really is a good thing he kept making movies, because if he’d stopped here, he wouldn’t be nearly as loved or respected as he is today.

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