1941 (1979)
What it tries to do: Steven Spielberg wanted to pay homage to the movie conventions of the '40s in the counterculture style of the '70s. Meanwhile, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale produced a spoofy, Mad magazine-inspired script that essentially repeated their winning formula from the previous year's I Wanna Hold Your Hand, encapsulating the grand American pageant in the course of one busy day.
Why it failed: The words "big budget" and "comedy" should rarely appear in the same sentence. Spielberg demonstrates his lack of feel for the relaxed, slobby Saturday Night Live sensibility, and 1941 suffers from a kind of bloat not seen since the overbearing, self-satisfied, star-studded affairs of the mid-'60s.
Why it's worth seeing: Like Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, 1941 contains a handful of smashing setpieces that played like gangbusters at the rushes and still work today. The USO dancing sequence is the most eye-popping, followed closely by the climactic demolition, but 1941's best moments are subtler, like Robert Stack getting emotional over a screening of Dumbo, and Slim Pickens bickering with the Japanese over his stool sample. Ultimately, the movie fits in reasonably well with Spielberg's other war movies—which, like his fantasy movies, tend to be about how manmade systems break down.
Gigli (2003)
What it tries to do: Writer/director Martin Brest tries to riff playfully and irreverently on gender and sexuality within the context of a light-footed crime comedy.
Why it failed: It doesn't help that Gigli's title could only be pronounced by the late-night talk-show hosts mocking it, or that it starred a tabloid couple far past their media oversaturation point. But beyond these superficial elements, it's hard to know where to start when assessing the film's flaws: Elements like slack pacing, a bloated run time, a shapeless, self-satisfied script, and a Baywatch-obsessed retarded kid are only the beginning. The public and media couldn't wait for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez to screw up, so Gigli must have seemed like an answer to their prayers.
Why it's worth seeing: The film's historic level of miscalculation alone gives it a distinct train-wreck watchability, and any film that features a mentally handicapped youngster rapping "Baby Got Back" in its entirety can't be accused of lacking chutzpah. Also, Christopher Walken's cameo as a deranged cop is a masterful display of undiluted Walken weirdness.
New York, New York (1977)
What it tries to do: Like One From The Heart, New York, New York sets out to revolutionize the musical form by injecting it with the gritty neo-realism, antic improvisation, and jagged emotions of vintage John Cassavetes while simultaneously playing up the genre's overt stylization.
Why it failed: American audiences in the '70s were famously adventurous and open-minded, but even they drew the line at shelling out hard-earned dough on a grim, gritty, three-hour-long musical largely devoid of sympathetic characters. It didn't help that the film sought to revive a moribund genre, or that it had to face the high expectations created by Scorsese's previous film, Taxi Driver.
Why it's worth seeing: New York, New York doesn't succeed as a whole, but individual scenes and setpieces have an electric snap, and Scorsese remains a towering master of his craft, pumping the film full of more ideas than it knows what to do with. It's fascinating watching an auteur with such a strong personality tackle a genre as tough to bend as the musical.
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