Wendie Jo Sperber | Through the Shattered Lens

In the year 1979, a young Steven Spielberg attempted to conquer comedy in the same way that he previously conquered horror with Jaws and science fiction with Close Encounters of The Third Kind. Working from a script written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Spielberg made a film about the days immediately following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The name of the film was 1941 and it remains Steven Spielberg’s only attempt to direct a full-out comedy. There’s a reason for that.

The film follows a large group of characters over the course of one day and night in 1941. It’s been six days since Pearl Harbor was attacked and the streets of Los Angeles are full of young men who are preparing to ship out and older man who are paranoid about when the next attack is going to come. However, Major General Joseph Stilwell (Robert Stack) just wants to see Dumbo at the local theater. Meanwhile, his womanizing aide (Tim Matheson, giving the same performance here that he did in National Lampoon’s Animal House) just wants to get Stillwell’s aviation-lusting secretary (Nancy Allen) into an airplane.

Elsewhere, Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty) is happy to allow Sgt. Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and his men (including John Candy) to set up on an anti-aircraft gun in his front yard. Ward’s daughter, Betty (Dianne Kay), is only concerned about entering a dance contest with her friend, Maxine (Wendie Jo Sperber). Cpl. Sitarski (Treat Williams) and dishwasher Wally Stephens (Bobby D iCicco) both hope to be Betty’s partner and their rivalry leads to a massive (and seemingly never-ending) brawl.

While Ward deals with the gun in his front yard, another concerned citizen — Claude Crumm (Murray Hamilton) — keeps watch from atop of Ferris wheel, along with amateur ventriloquist Herbie Kazlminsky (Eddie Deezen).

But that’s not all! Susan Backilinie recreates her role from a previous Spielberg film, skinny dipping while the Jaws theme plays in the background and running straight into a submarine that is commanded by Commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune, trying to maintain his dignity). Mifune decides to attack Hollywood but no one on the submarine is sure where that is. Christopher Lee appears as an arrogant German who is along for the ride. Slim Pickens shows up as a lumberjack who is temporarily captured by the Japanese. John Belushi plays Wild Bill Kelso, who flies his airplane through Los Angeles. Warren Oates yells and laughs. Dick Miller, Elijah Cook Jr. and Lionel Stander show up in small roles.

“Since when is Steven funny?” According to Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, this was the reaction that most of Spielberg’s friends had when he announced that his next film would be a screwball comedy set during World War II. Watching the film, one gets their point. The majority of the film’s humor comes from people looking at the camera and screaming. There’s a lot physical comedy, which would undoubtedly work in small amounts but which grows rather tiring when it’s dragged out to the extent that Spielberg’s drags it out. (A brawl at a USO show seems like it should be funny but Spielberg allows it to go on for too long and the careful choreography takes away any element of spontaneity.) The film attempts to duplicate the style of Animal House (and it’s probably not a coincidence that Matheson, Belushi, and director John Landis all have roles in the film) but Spielberg often seems as if he’s trying too hard. There’s nothing subversive about the humor. It’s more antic than funny.

A huge problem is that there really isn’t much of a story here. Spielberg, who is normally one of Hollywood’s best storytellers, attempts to do a loose, Altman-style ensemble film and the result is that none of the characters feel alive and there’s never any sense of narrative momentum. There are a few performers who manage to make an impression amongst all the explosions and the yelling. John Belushi has the advantage of not having to share the majority of his scenes with anyone else. Warren Oates’s manic energy is more than welcome. Wendie Jo Sperber deserved more screentime. Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen frequently made me laugh. There’s a wonderful moment where Robert Stack’s intense general cries while watching Dumbo. But, for the most part, the film never comes together.

That said, 1941 is definitely a Steven Spielberg film. It received three Academy Award nominations, for Cinematography, Sound, and Visual Effects. (All three of those categories, not surprisingly, are more associated with spectacle than with comedy.) The film looks great! Spielberg’s attention to detail is there in the production design and the costumes. Watching 1941, you can see Spielberg’s talent while also seeing why he never directed another comedy.

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Well, this is certainly intimidating.

Earlier today, I was sitting at my day job and I happened to glance down at my to-do list to see what I was scheduled to review next in my Back To School series and there, listed at #37, was a somewhat popular film from 1985. The name of the film was Back To The Future and…

Oh, you’ve heard of it? And you already know what the movie’s about because literally everyone on the planet has either seen Back to The Future or knows someone who has seen Back To The Future and loves it so much that they can tell you every little detail about the adventures of Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and that time-traveling DeLorean?

Well, just be quiet and bear with me. I always like to give a plot synposis in my reviews. For one thing, it’s a good way to let you know who plays who in the film.

So, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is, despite his somewhat embarrassing last name, a perfectly normal American teenager. He lives in a nice, small town. He has a pretty girlfriend (Claudia Wells). He likes to ride his skateboard. He likes to play guitar (though he’s deemed to be “too loud” by at least one of his teachers). The high school’s principal (James Tolkan) often gives him a hard time for being late but other than that, Marty seems to be a pretty regular guy…

Except his family has some major issues. His mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) is an alcoholic who won’t stop talking about how she first met her husband George (Crispin Glover) after her father hit him with his car. George, meanwhile, is a total wimp who is continually bullied by his boss, Biff (Thomas F. Wilson). Marty’s older siblings (Marc McClure and Wendie Jo Sperber) are both living directionless lives and Marty has every reason to fear that he might end up following them.

Fortunately, Marty has a best friend named Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) who has built a time machine inside of a luxury vehicle. Late one night, Doc recruits Marty to help him test out the machine but what Doc didn’t mention is that in order to power his time machine, he had still plutonium from a group of terrorists. Those terrorists show up and kill Doc. Marty flees in the car and soon finds himself trapped in 1955.

Marty manages to track down the younger version of Doc Brown and the two of them start trying to work out how to get Marty back to the future. (We have a title!) Marty, of course, wants to warn Doc about what’s going to happen in 1985 but Doc insists that Marty tell him nothing about the future. Doc also tells Marty that he has to be very careful, while in the past, not to change the future.

Too late! Marty has already met teenage Lorraine. See, Marty happened to spot George up in a tree, peeping on Lorraine as she undressed. (“He’s a pervert!” Marty exclaims.) When George falls out of the tree and lands in the street, Marty pushes him out of the way of an approaching car. Marty gets hit by the car, which is being driven by his own grandfather. So now, Marty has essentially prevented his parents from meeting and, as a result, the McFly children are slowly fading from existence.

So, before Marty can go back to 1985, he has to get George and Lorraine back together. The main problem, of course, is that Lorraine now has a crush on her own son…

Wow, that’s a lot of plot there. There’s a lot going on in Back to the Future and there are times when it almost feels like a dozen different films in one. It’s a science fiction film, with Doc and Marty spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a time machine work with 1955 technology and weather. It’s an action film, with Marty fleeing terrorists in 1985 and Biff in 1955. It’s a romance, with the always endearingly weird Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson making for an odd but cute couple. (Thought it’s wrong on so many levels, Thompson and Fox also have a lot of chemistry and are cute together, as long as you ignore the fact that they are playing mother and son!) It’s a frequently hilarious comedy, with the entire cast giving heartfelt performances. It’s an anthropological study, comparing the 50s and the 80s. It’s a satirical look at how teenager’s tend to view their parents, with Marty discovering that everything that he’s assumed at his mom was basically incorrect. And finally, it’s a surprisingly subversive film, with Marty and Lorraine’s 1955 relationship constantly running the risk of turning into an Oedipal nightmare.

And yet the entire film flows together so perfectly that you’re never aware of just how busy it all really is. Between director Robert Zemeckis’s sure-handed direction, the clever script by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and a uniformly excellent cast, Back to the Future is one of those films that verges on being flawless.

And, for that reason, it can be very intimidating to review.

I just don’t know how I’m going to do it…