Movies
The Blues Brothers
Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, as a couple of Chicago white boys tuned to a rhythm-and-blues wavelength, expand the musical act they unveiled on television's Saturday Night Live into a full-blown slapstick chase movie, travelling through a meaningful cultural landscape that includes a Catholic orphanage, a black Baptist church, a soul-food restaurant, a skid-row hotel for transients, a Holiday Inn lounge, a fancy French restaurant, a redneck bar called Bob's Country Bunker, and more. The sensitivity to cultural discord often results in something quite touching, like the sight of these two white Negroes enclosed in an elevator and showered with a Muzak rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema." Aykroyd and Belushi look well and move well in their anonymous, Mafia-hitman suits and sunglasses, but it is never resolved satisfactorily what we are supposed to make of them as musicians. The fact that they clearly do not measure up to, indeed barely come up to the ankles of, the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, and Cab Calloway, is not really detrimental to the movie and is certainly no disgrace. With Carrie Fisher, Henry Gibson, Steve Lawrence, and Twiggy; directed by John Landis. 1980.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: R
Best SNL spinoff ever? Yeppers! They were on a "mission from God," and their mission succeeded. If you ignore the ill-conceived sequel BB 2000, this one can stand as a testament to how effin brilliant and funny Dan Ackroyd once was. Perhaps he was replaced after this film by the same faulty clone factory that screwed up after the real Paul McCartney died in a car crash?
By jayallen 7:52 p.m., Mar 10, 2010 > Report it