Blues Brothers 2000.

Review #1699: Blues Brothers 2000.

Cast: 

Dan Aykroyd (Elwood J. Blues), John Goodman (Mack McTeer), Joe Morton (Commander Cabel Chamberlain), J. Evan Bonifant (Buster Blues), featuring Aretha Franklin (Mrs. Murphy), James Brown (Reverend Cleophus James), B.B. King (Malvern Gasperone), The Blues Brothers Band [Steve "The Colonel" Cropper (rhythm guitar / vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass guitar), Murphy Dunne (keyboards), Willie "Too Big" Hall (drums and percussion), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone / tenor saxophone / vocals), "Blue Lou" Marini (alto saxophone / tenor saxophone / vocals), Matt "Guitar" Murphy (lead guitar), Alan "Mr. Fabulous" Rubin (trumpet / percussion / vocals)], The Louisiana Gator Boys [various musicians, featured below], Erykah Badu (Queen Moussette), Blues Traveler, Lonnie Brooks, Eddie Floyd, and Kathleen Freeman (Mother Mary Stigmata) Directed by John Landis (#328 - Trading Places, #410 - Coming to America, #513 - Spies Like Us, #1114 - Animal House, #1462 - The Blues Brothers, and #1465 - An American Werewolf in London)

Review: 

"I was very pissed off by what Universal did to me on ‘Blues Brothers 2000′ and that was my first experience with the new corporate Hollywood. It’s very different. Everything is by committee now, and they destroyed that movie, though the music is still good."

If you remember correctly, the Blues Brothers was the result of two guys who loved the blues. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (who credits Donnie Walsh and Richard “Hock” Walsh as the model for their characters) had performed together on Saturday Night Live with the act a few times before being asked by Steve Martin to be his opening act at one of his shows, which resulted in the live album Briefcase Full of Blues in 1978. This, alongside Belushi's success with Animal House (1978) only served to attract the interest of studios to engage in a bidding war to make a movie. Of course, that movie was racked by chaos involving substances and one half of its writing team being fairly green at the art of creating a screenplay. In other words, it wasn't easy to make a movie involving numerous music acts and the destruction of 103 cars while shooting exclusively in Chicago, or one that focused exclusively on the blues (in a time that was more about disco and less about the blues and soul) while dodging complaints of being too over-the-top (i.e. people who don't know shit) to become a classic. Perhaps it only makes sense that Aykroyd kept the name around with the chain restaurant (and live music concert hall) House of Blues, which has managed to have a few locations around the country, and Aykroyd has taken to tour on occasion with the band (alongside with John's younger brother, Jim). So yes, I suppose it makes sense that Aykroyd wanted to do another movie involving the blues and put more acts on film. Of course, it is also possible that Aykroyd and Landis wanted to re-capture lightning in a bottle when it comes to success - this was after all the sixth collaboration between the two of them, all of which that were done in the 1980s. Just remember, this was done in 1998.

Reportedly, Landis and Aykroyd did not have a great time with filming. While they were the writers behind the script, Universal Pictures made their stipulations clear that involved requiring a PG-13 rating and a child lead. Of course, the original pitch that the two was apparently just a re-hash of the original, since it would have featured a plot involving refurbishing the old orphanage (which would have featured Jim Belushi cast as "Brother Zee" alongside Goodman as a trio). Of course, Belushi could not do the film due to contractual obligations (at the time, he was cast in a lead part in the series Total Security, which didn't even make it to 1998), so the script instead was modified to include Morton. Have you ever seen a movie that looks and seems DOA as quickly as this one? Making a sequel eighteen years after the fact is already a tough task, but making a comedy sequel that has the task of replacing one part of its key nucleus is like trying to do The Three Stooges with only two actors. Of course, Belushi wasn't the only actor to have died in the gap between the two films (the film opens with a tribute to Belushi, Cab Calloway and John Candy). Oddly enough, everybody else in the Blues Brothers Band returns, and they all get to have a scene dedicated to re-uniting them all together, because how else would this film run for two hours? Well, there is one solution that would probably have worked to the benefit of everybody who don't care for stories about pint-sized kids getting mentors and voodoo witches: focus entirely on the music. Heck, cut around the "plot" with no explanation and call it artistic license, that would probably work just as well (that, or alienate a whole bunch of folks who wonder where Eric Clapton came from). Call it the "Mission from the Blues" Edition, if you will. Let me be clear: teenagers don't watch movies just because the rating is PG-13 instead of R, and they sure won't watch it just because there's a kid as one of the leads. That isn't say to that foul language and certain situations is important to making something people want to watch, but this is a movie that clearly is the result of studio notes from people who think they know better.

Perhaps it is my imagination or my memories have faded from the year that followed watching the original film, but Aykroyd seems to have thoroughly faded into nothingness when it comes to generating anything more than a quivering thought of a chuckle. The fact that he doesn't take off those Ray Ban sunglasses doesn't help either, a dubious marker of shame for someone who probably should have known better as both writer AND star. Honestly, I do wonder if Goodman would have prevailed with the original script when it comes to zippy energy. He seems kind of pale here, seemingly stuck in that suit and sunglasses like a statue without a home to draw a response. Morton gets to play both uptight authority and inevitable "Blues Brother" in the same film, and it is perhaps a fitting marker of dubiousness that his most notable scene is one where he sees the error of his ways by levitating in the air and changing his outfit. Embarrassment is a hard word to swallow when it involves your lead trio. Well, there is Bonifant, but you and I both know that child actors are either forgettable, passable, or terrible. Take a guess how he does. Perhaps if one had never heard of the original movie they would be okay with this one, or maybe if they watched it solely to see blues musicians play on a big screen. Name dropping is an annoying habit, but yes, there are quite a few performers to see (mostly near the end) for the "The Louisiana Gator Boys": B.B. King, Isaac Hayes, Lou Rawls, Billy Preston, Bo Diddley, Koko Taylor, you get the idea. It is far more interesting than the car wrecks or the attempts at plot that go nowhere (which involves the group being turned into plastic statues after being forced to play Caribbean music...???). In the end, this reeks of something you might see in the direct-to-video junkpile, yet here we are with a $31 million/123 minute movie of failure that benefits from moments of music more so than anything else - indeed, it is some sort of accomplishment to have brought back the same director and a portion of the same cast after many years apart and make a sequel inferior in every way. 

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

The Blues Brothers.

Review #1462: The Blues Brothers.

Cast: 
John Belushi ("Joliet" Jake Blues), Dan Aykroyd (Elwood Blues), featuring James Brown (Reverend Cleophus James), Cab Calloway (Curtis), Ray Charles (Ray), Aretha Franklin (Mrs. Murphy), Steve "the Colonel" Cropper (Lead guitar), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass guitar), Murphy Dunne (keyboards), Willie "Too Big" Hall (drums), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), Lou "Blue Lou" Marini (saxophone), Matt "Guitar" Murphy (lead guitar), "Mr. Fabulous" Alan Rubin (trumpet), with Carrie Fisher (Mystery Woman), Henry Gibson (The Head Nazi), John Candy (Burton Mercer), John Lee Hooker (Street Slim), and Kathleen Freeman (Sister Mary Stigmata) Directed by John Landis (#328 - Trading Places, #410 - Coming to America, and #513 - Spies Like Us, and #1114 - Animal House)

Review: 
"...A good man, but a bad boy." 

Every decade had plenty of entertainment to spare, and the 1980s was certainly a decade among itself in trying to reach audiences every which way it could, for better or worse. A newly forged era of studio films with the stars came about in this decade that emphasized high-concept ideas for films to go along with the freshly-devised blockbuster (an old term in the 1940s that came back into prominence with the release of films like Jaws and Star Wars). One film to represent a high point in comedy to start the decade off is this film, directed by a newly-honed showman director in John Landis and talents in John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. They had met while each were performing in The Second City comedy troupe in 1973 (Aykroyd initially joined the Toronto troupe before being part of the Chicago group). Both were original members of the television series Saturday Night Live when it began in 1975, and they both had developed interest in music from a young age, with Aykroyd being interested in the blues while growing up near a blues/jazz club in Ottawa and Belushi having formed his own band while growing up in Chicago lasted for exactly one single (where he played drums and sang). In 1978, they formed The Blues Brothers, which turned from a musical sketch on SNL to an actual band that had Belushi as vocalist and Aykroyd as harmonica/vocalist while being accompanied by musicians of the time such as Paul Shaffer for their debut album in Briefcase Full of Blues (with Cropper, Dunn, Murphy, Malone, Marini, Rubin participating in both the album and the film), which did covers of blues and soul songs that ranged from "Soul Man" to "Groove Me".

This was the second of three collaborations in film that they would do after leaving SNL and having their own band (the other films being 1941 and Neighbors). The script for this film was originally done by Aykroyd, who wrote over 300 pages. Obviously this couldn't work for just one film, so it fell to Landis to help cut the script down over the course of a couple of week (it did not stop the film from possibly being too long, since the first cut of the film was actually two-and-a-half fours long). We are talking about a film that involves folks on the run from the police, Illinois Nazis, and country singers, after all. The film had its share of production issues, such as the budget, which Universal had actually settled to initially make for $17.5 million that went to over $30 million at the end along with trying to keep Belushi away from going over on his addiction to cocaine, but it all eventually worked out for a tremendous success in the end. There aren't that many comedies that can also be thought of as a musical (or at least that what Landis said to the crew), especially one that presents musical greats and gives them each a chance to sing a number, whether it is Calloway singing his classic "Minnie the Moocher" with a big band behind him once again or an energetic Brown (as if one expects anything different from the "Godfather of Soul"), and so on and so on - with the Blues Brothers following right behind in doing entertaining covers of songs to go with it ("Theme from Rawhide" was a song I head long before I saw this film, but it doesn't make it any less charming). Simply put, Belushi and Aykroyd are a dream team of energy and deadpan that makes for a mostly successful ballad of humor and songs in a manic state that holds up well after four decades. This is the kind of film where a stroll through the mall with cars is only just the first layer of the spectacle cake that makes for silly fun to go with a fair supporting group to go alongside our main duo (such as a jilted would-be assassin played by Fisher) and a sneaky Gibson. On the whole, this 133-minute package of music and comedy might go over the top in chaos, but it has a cast and director that make the best of it with success more often than not to make a worthy film to represent a decade with.


Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Now then, let me announce the films slated for review in July. It was a list worked over to try and fit the best possible representations of the decade without going completely overboard - despite that, there are 32 slated reviews, with several films that didn't make the shortlist that could be done at a later time. Although I do wish there was a special review for Canada Day or Independence Day, I do hope that this month will prove satisfactory for some fun reviews of interesting movies, both with new and old faces.