Review of The Blues Brothers (1980) by Troy H — 20 Oct 2010

When it comes to films based on Saturday Night Live characters there is only on film I can think of, and that is The Blues Brothers. At the time this was released in Australia there wasn't much awareness of what Saturday Night Live was (at least I think that was the case at the time) and yet this film still became a rather popular film.

I was not around at the release of this film (movie was release 1980, I was born 1984) but my parents were fans of this film and as a result I've grown up with this film. The film follows Jake and Elwood Blues as they work to get their band back together for 'a mission from god' to raise money to save the orphanage they grew up in.

Along the way end up getting involved in prompt and impromptu performances of Jazz/Blue songs, get into trouble with the law and manage to escape death for the various assassination attempts from a jilted woman (played by Carrie Fisher.

) The story is rather outlandish but it is not played out too outlandish. Something that I feel is a problem with some other comedy films, particularly films based on SNL characters, is that it seems they feel they need to make it very obvious they are a comedy.

The Blues Brothers doesn't really do that, it just goes into these outlandish situations and has the characters react to them as though they are normal with at least minimal added comedic sound effects or music.

Something that additionally helps this movie is that the Blues Brothers characters were not completely created to just simple make fun of blues musicians but were created out of two comedians (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi) love for blues music and it shows in that the songs performed in the film are not silly joke songs produced with joke lyrics but instead are proper blues songs preformed at times by original performers (like Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin and for a brief appearance John Lee Hooker.

) Great film that I feel everyone should watch.