baracine

... I mean besides one being directed by Robert Zemeckis on a script by Carl Sagan and the other turkey being written by Robert Zemeckis and directed by Steven Spielberg?

Well, dig this. In Contact (1997), an important part of the relationship between Ellie (Jodie Foster) and Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) centers around a Cracker Jack toy compass he gives to her, she gives back to him and eventually receives again from him just before her trip in outer space.

A Cracker Jack toy compass was also an important story element in 1941 (1979), possibly the most vulgar and unfunny big-budget comedy ever crafted in this universe. A Japanese submarine commander having been stranded in San Francisco Bay kidnaps, with the help of a Nazi general (don't ask), a local cowboy (Slim Pickins) who has swallowed - you guessed it - a toy Cracker Jack compass and tries to coax him to defecate so they can find their way out of the harbour. This scene - besides being the low point of all American cinema up to that point and a harbinger of things to come as far as toilet humour is concerned in mainstream American entertainment - is also a potent metaphor for the whole film: a bunch a nominally adult people looking for a sense of direction amid a pile of caca.

I like to think of the (ahem!) "resurfacing" of this toy compass in Contact as Zemeckis' way of making amends for past lapses in taste and judgement...

obscurelabel

*unashamedly likes 1941*

Crocker Jarmen

I sometimes wish you had your own radio show.

baracine

I could never survive in that fast-paced, erudite, high-pressure, ultra-hip environment. I had to look up "nappy-headed" just the other day. It's an expression I had never heard before in Canada.

Giles

on a side note, one of my Mom's friends didn't know what a 'ho' was.

Mopower

You could have been really mean and yet very funny if you had handed her a mirror.

baracine

I understand the man was talking about common garden implements having a bad-hair day...

Kudama

Also, suspiciously enough, neither film featured a young Peter Graves flashback.

baracine

You see, that's another reason I am not a radio host. I don't get that joke. Seriously...

Correct me if I'm wrong: Peter Graves appears as himself in "House on Haunted Hill" (1999), which Zemeckis produced?

calhoun07

Same here. I bought it on DVD when it first came out and I had never seen it before (not sure why I bought it...I think it was the early days of DVDs and Spielberg movies on DVD were hard to come by) and I thought it would really suck, like Battle Beyond the Stars suck. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the movie. I wondered why it got such bad feedback.

Then I read online that it was far more well received in Europe. For some reason, my tastes in music and movies have always leaned more towards European tastes.

baracine

The European (i.e. French) critical reaction to 1941 was typical of what's so terribly wrong with French critics in general: they always praise what Americans despise, just to be on the safe side, which means that, in this case, they chose to find "hilarious" a film whose chaotic vulgarity they didn't quite understand (who could?) but that they hypnoptized themselves into believing was a radically anti-war film, whereas it was just another lowest-common-denominator teenage comedy using attempted date rape as an amusing premise and drugged-out stars this close to an on-screen overdose as a main attraction. The film's moral, in case you're wondering, is that "war is funny"...

The French were also overwhelmed by the immensity of this film's budget and understandably assumed that it must be "a serious film", coming right on the heels of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One pundit even goes so far as to proclaim this film reveals "the sombre side of Spielberg" ( http://www.filmdeculte.com/coupdepro...nspielberg.php ). Well, that and the fact that the man is also capable of serious lapses in judgement and might have been hitting the coke too hard...

Charlie Goose

There are Cracker Jacks coming out of my dog!

porieux

I think 1941 could be OK if it was severely edited. It is WAAY too long, but the scenes with John Belushi are funny. Also that scene with Slim Pickins is hilarious and one of the funniest parts of the movie. But there is a lot of boring stuff that needed to be cut (and actually they should have expanded more on the Belushi parts IMO)

baracine

The only way this film could be OK is if it had never been made. Any film based on the premise that "war is funny" is off to a bumpy ride it can't possibly recover from unless it is written by a genius. This films shows that no amount of money, special effects, shrill, over-the-top acting, John Williams orchestrations, hits of cocaine or costumed extras standing in the pouring rain during 50 outdoor takes can make an unfunny joke funny. Some things are preordained. If you had voted Republican, you couldn't find anything funny in Mike Judge's Idiocracy either.

The only moments where a viewer can enjoy himself during this ordeal are the few instances where he is allowed to forget what film he is watching or what it is supposed to be about. Toilet humour, rape jokes and a coked-up John Belushi just don't do it for me.

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ToddSm66

I love 1941...was one of my favorite comedies growing up. I own the DVD, and still watch it every once in a while. Warren Oates and Slim Pickens were hilarious. Some people just have no sense of humor.



Contact on the other hand. Bleh.