Allow me to make something abundantly clear about Steven Spielberg's 1941: most of the visual humor and set-pieces involving things getting blown up work. The opening sequence spoofing Jaws (1975) where a night-swimmer gets trapped on the periscope of a Japanese sub was ingenious. The image of a Ferris Wheel rolling into the California Bay was striking and effective. The scene where a lone bomb from a B-52 disrupts a speech being given about how Japanese bombers will never reach California worked. It all worked. What didn't work were the smaller scale scenes involving individual characters acting weird, crazy, and over-the-top. Why? Because all of the principal characters know they're in a comedy. And nothing wrecks a comedy faster than characters who are in on the joke. The only exception that I can think of are the Marx Brothers movies. And even then only the Brothers themselves were in on the gag. This film also needed at least one less sub-plot. It's two-and-a-half hour run-time is exhaustive, especially for a comedy. Lengthy run-times are alright for action films and dramas, but comedies are much more stamina-draining for both filmmakers and audiences.
5/10
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