Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Lorraine Gary
Have I Seen It Before: Yes. I have the strongest memory of sitting in my bedroom and watching the thing on VHS. Why wouldn’t I have done so? Spielberg? Check. Aykroyd and Belushi? More check. Script by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale? Yet more check.
Did I Like It: Well, I suppose Coppola went to Vietnam, and Spielberg decided to instead go to Santa Barbara… Both of them probably thought on some level that they were going to war in their own way.
Spielberg was absolutely right in understanding that he was two-ish decades away from being ready to handle a serious war movie, and so went lighter with the whole affair. Thank God he got the idea that he could do a big, John Landis (if not out-and-out ZAZ-style) comedy out of his system here, or we might have been forced to endure Bill Murray as Indiana Jones or something unfathomably awful by the time he came around to Saving Private Ryan (1998).
And I say this all without trying to say that the film isn’t worth a look. Spielberg is working with that same “Gee, Sammy Fabelman loves movies more than the rest of us ever could” energy that made virtually every other film he’s ever made a classic. The John Williams score is exactly what any reasonable person would want out of one of his score. If the film had stuck with the collective imagination a little (probably a lot) more than it did, it might have joined the pantheon of his great works.
It's just not very funny. I can’t remember laughing once during the thing. That’s okay, there are plenty of great films that aren’t particularly funny. Zemeckis and Gale harnessed similar energy in Romancing the Stone (1984), and yes, even in Back to the Future (1985). Spielberg, certainly in this era, is the absolute, undisputed king of light pop entertainments. But it is impossible for a viewer to look at Aykroyd, Belushi, or even John Candy and think they are supposed to laugh. And when those laughs come, there isn’t a whole lot else to say.