Category: Penny Marshall

1941

By Marc S. Sanders

Steven Spielberg’s first critical and box office flop, 1941, is a splattered mess of slapstick hysteria set a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Residents of the California coast line prepare to be the next target.  Ahem!!!!!  Well, that’s it for the story…Goodnight.  Tip your waiters.

Just a year ahead of the Zucker brothers with Abrams comedy team that’ll deliver Airplane!, Spielberg opted to direct a spoof script penned by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (Back To The Future).  1941 is full of gags galore beginning with a reference to the director’s most successful film to date, Jaws.  For me, seeing actress Susan Backline on screen again for another ocean skinny dip only to be intruded upon by a rising Japanese submarine was the second best joke of the film.  Once that was over, I had two hours left to go.  A long two hours. 

I’ve noted before that satire or spoofs are the riskiest genres to produce.  They can succeed with a picture like Dr. Strangelove…, or Network or Airplane!  Satire can be divisive too though, and thus only one half of your audience will appreciate the poke and prod.  Even worse, satire can just be unfunny across the board no matter which side of the aisle you lean on.  That’s 1941.  It plays too much like a Three Stooges series of slapstick violence.  Reader, even Steven Spielberg cannot capture the magic of the Three Stooges.

Zemeckis and Gale opt to poke a little fun at the Puerto Rican zoot suit riots vs the Enlisted men ahead of America’s entry into World War II.  So, when army soldier Treat Williams gets jealous of one handsome zoot suit dancer flirting with his girl, a fight breaks out which eventually populates two thirds of the film as it escalates all the way over to Hollywood Boulevard. Now thousands of stooge wannabe extras are walloping each other from one side of the street to the next. 

To allow a breather from this, the writers sidetrack over to Tim Matheson and Nancy Allen getting frisky in an out of control bi-plane while being mistaken for the enemy by John Belushi doing a very poor resurrection of his Bluto character from Animal House.  As Captain Wild Bill Kelso, Belushi’s pursuit fires upon everything else in sight, especially Hollywood Boulevard, but misses the plane occupied by Matheson and Allen.

The third point of this rectangle concerns Dan Aykroyd with John Candy and a whole platoon opting to set up a military cannon along the ocean view property belonging to Ned Beatty and Lorraine Gary in anticipation of the Japanese invasion.  Ned Beatty is the best stooge of the entire cast as the nerdy resident determined to protect his home while exercising his patriotic duty.  Gary’s response to Beatty’s ineptitude cracked me up as well.  The house wreckage of The Money Pit has nothing on what occurs in 1941.

The fourth storyline focuses on the enemy with a German speaking Nazi portrayed by Christopher Lee debating with the captain of a Japanese submarine (Toshiro Mifune) plotting to bomb Hollywood.  Somehow, each foil understands the other’s language.  These guys are just here to scream at one another.  There’s nothing funny about them.

Oh yeah.  Robert Stack is the Army General who watches Dumbo in the movie theatre while Hollywood Boulevard gets demolished outside.  Ho! Ho!

Often, I compliment Spielberg for his reliance on the sets he provides.  Everything you see on the screen serves a purpose to his films.  It happened as recently as with his remake of West Side Story in 2021, and it’s effectively used in Close Encounters…  He uses the same approach with 1941.  In this film though, there’s no pulse or significance to the props and pieces that are used.  The house is demolished.  So is the storage shed.  So is the movie theatre.  So is the Ferris wheel.  Yes.  What you’ve already seen in endless Looney Toons cartoons occurs here with a miniature model.  The Ferris wheel comes off its hinge and rolls across the beach side dock into the water along with Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen in tow.  When it happens, you’ll tell yourself I was waiting for that to happen.  What you expect to happen, happens, but you’re not laughing at it.

None of what you see in 1941 are terrible gags.  If you watch one scene out of context on a four minute You Tube channel, you may chuckle.  The problem is that every scene is treated like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what will stick.  Mashing all of this together is not appetizing.  I like ice cream and I like steak.  I don’t like my ice cream on my steak.  Any idea of development is completely ignored.  The film can’t even work like a collection of skits.  Even Airplane! had a romantic storyline trajectory to perform with.  Here, two jealous guys have a fist fight and it more or less stretches that fight for an entire two hours.  The Three Stooges knew when to eventually quit.  Spielberg, Zemeckis and Gale didn’t. 

As soon as I saw Belushi on screen, I laughed.  It’s Bluto again.  Yet, the appearance wears off very quickly.  He has little dialogue and is limited to chomping on a cigar while grunting and groaning as the fighter plane he occupies wobbles around shooting at everything in sight.  When he eventually crash lands, Belushi continues to chomp on the cigar and grunt and groan.  Only now, he pratfalls as well…badly.

Ned Beatty is the real star here.  The ultimate nerd is also limited in dialogue. Still, to watch his body language with his glasses and bow tie and pear-shaped physique, accompanied with Lorraine Gary’s helpless gasping wife responding to the damage he commits with the cannon is hilarious.  Absolutely hilarious.  Tape all of their scenes together and make it a short to present ahead of the main attraction in a movie house. The audience will have a great time.

Otherwise, the only other fun I got out of 1941 was spotting the stars that were relevant at the time of its release.  Candy, Aykroyd, Frank McRae, Slim Pickens, Christopher Lee, Robert Stack, the cute blonde daughter from Eight Is Enough.  Even Penny Marshall has a quick blink and you miss it moment.  Oh, and look, there’s Lenny and Squiggy!

I think Zemeckis and Gale were on to a real smart idea here.  They maybe should have consulted with Harold Ramis and his National Lampoon’s crew however, because that’s the direction Spielberg’s film was aiming for.  What sets a film like Animal House apart from a 1941 though is in the set up.  Dialogue also helps.  1941 lacks set up.  1941 lacks dialogue.  It’s all visual and noise and more noise and more noise. 

1941 begins at letter A, and stops at letter A, never making it to B, and definitely never reaching Z.  An idea with potential was put down on paper.  The problem is these guys stopped writing after the first sentence.

AWAKENINGS

By Marc S. Sanders

The title of Penny Marshall’s film Awakenings has at least two meanings.  The most obvious focuses on Robert DeNiro’s character, Leonard Lowe, who comes out of a near thirty-year catatonic state one day.  As well, Robin Williams plays Dr. Malcolm Sayer, the doctor who uncovers the experimental drug that awakens Leonard, along with other patients who reside in the caretaker ward located in the Bronx.  Many of the patients share the same abnormality as Leonard, due to all suffering from a wave of encephalitis that swept through the area in the 1920s. 

DeNiro and Williams are a top of their game pair together.  Both of them go against type that many audiences were accustomed to by the time this film released in 1990; DeNiro – the tough, short tempered, unhinged guy; Williams – the manic, fast talking, quick on his feet comic.  Both actors bring it down many notches to bring this story to light that was inspired by the documented experiences of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Still, Penny Marshall has a way a bringing gentleness with touches of comedy to this film just like she did with Big and A League Of Their Own.  Okay, maybe those films were more energetic at first and then quieted down, thereafter.  Awakenings performs in the opposite direction, but Marshall’s recipe of drama mixed with humor is so appreciated.

Dr. Sayer is a shy individual with limited social skills.  He relates more to plant life than actual humans.  When he’s recruited by the hospital administration, led by the intentionally obnoxious and objectionable John Heard, to oversee the patients at the ward, he does so without any intent to make a difference.  The hospital staff is just fine with that.  Soon though, Dr. Sayer is recognizing a behavior in some of the patients.  They seem to be staring into space, open mouthed with no emotion or change in expression, but they respond to a variety of unusual stimuli.  A woman will walk across the social hall on the black squares of a checkered floor.  Leonard, and a few other patients, will catch and toss a tennis ball around.  Yet, they won’t blink or wince or smile.  Through further research, Dr. Sayer takes a pharmaceutical risk and increases the dosage of an untested prescription over time.  One night, his patient zero, Leonard, is sitting up in bed and awake.  Shortly thereafter, he’s speaking, walking, and functioning like a regular forty something man.  Thereafter, the drug is administered to the other patients who demonstrate the same outcome. 

The challenge comes first from the hospital, though.  They are not prepared to take Dr. Sayer’s methods or assessments seriously and they are stubborn to recognize some exceptional progress.  Like any standard drama, this leads to conflicted debate.  The debates Dr. Sayer has with the hospital board never took me out of the picture, but I do question if the antagonism needed to be so close minded.  After all, should such unexpected and miraculous development be so dismissed?  The challenge seems so forced at times that a scene is offered where the doctor’s support from nursing and janitorial staff gladly gives up their hard-earned paychecks to help alleviate the expense of the experimental drugs.  It puts a lump in your throat for sure, but would this really happen? 

A hint at a romantic angle presents itself when the lovely Penelope Ann Miller arrives at the ward to tend to her ill father.  Leonard becomes smitten with her.  He is not free to go about as he pleases.  Miller’s character can.  Eventually, Leonard becomes rebellious of his “incarceration” within the ward while the hospital exercises its mandated caution.  While this is occurring, Leonard’s condition is deteriorating. 

Robert DeNiro received an Oscar nomination for this role and its easy to see why.  His physical performance comes so naturally, at first in the catatonic state, later as a man witnessing daily life in the hippie of age of the 1960s and then again as his body dwindles into uncontrollable spasms, when the drugs’ positive effective doesn’t hold.  His enunciation falters, his body violently twitches and he can’t even grasp anything.  It’s a sorrowful and marvelous performance to see.

Awakenings is a picture that performs with real heart and tenderness.  Marshall’s film offers a glimpse into a short period of time when adults who hadn’t gotten the opportunity to live active lives were suddenly offered an opening.  Leonard gets to see a jet liner fly overhead and take a walk in the ocean.  He can taste ice cream for the first time in years and get a glimpse of young hippie’s derriere.  The other patients get a chance to go to dance at a swing club.  As well, Dr. Sayer’s guarded exterior gradually sheds as he persists to act beyond the administrators’ objections and also consider a little romance for himself with a nursing assistant.  (Point of fact: Oliver Sacks was actually gay in real life.  So, some liberties are taken with the film.)

It’s important to point out a forgotten performance from Ruth Nelson as Leonard’s elderly mother.  She visits Leonard every day by reading to him, dressing him, and changing his diapers like any loving mother would.  Yet, as Leonard gets more independent, Nelson is terrific as the kindly elderly woman who has to become a different kind of mother to her son.  She is an quickly awakened from being the mother of a helpless child to the elderly mother who is not as capable of controlling her son’s choices.  Mrs. Lowe is rightly uncomfortable with Leonard’s affection for Miller’s character.  She’s just not used to this dynamic that’s come about so quickly.  What an amazing character arc and Nelson pulls off the portrayal beautifully.

Tear jerking films work best when they operate like Awakenings.  You’re given many opportunities to laugh and enjoy the pleasures and quirkiness of the characters.  Later, it becomes a welcome and satisfactory cry fest when what was once celebrated is at a risk of loss.  Penny Marshall worked best with this formula on these kinds of pictures.  It’s why a simple, seemingly silly story like Big worked.  It’s also why a female baseball movie worked as well beyond the diamond.  There was more dimension than just the basic summary.  Marshall always delved deeper and she allowed her actors to go that far as well.

Awakenings is a terrific film, blessed with a gamut of emotions.