Review of The Blues Brothers (1980) by Shovik S — 04 Jan 2011

Let me start out by saying that The Blues Brothers is my all time favorite comedy. It's delightfully over the top, brimming with good-natured energy, and set to some of the twentieth century's best music. Of all the Dan Akroyd/ John Belushi team ups, this is by far the best.

The plot, such as it is, involves the efforts Jake (Belushi) an Elwood (Akroyd) to reunite their old band, the Blues Brothers, for a concert that will raise the $3,000 dollars needed to save the Catholic orphanage where they grew up- hence the famous tagline "We're on a mission from God." But this is easier said than done. Their former band mates aren't that easy to convince, or even track down, gigs are hard to come by, and they manage to get on the wrong side of everybody from the police to the Illinois State Nazi Party. Of course this is really just the setup for a series of hilarious hi-jinks and upbeat musical numbers. And boy do they ever manage that.

Jake and Elroy are two of the funniest characters ever to appear on screen, and the roles that Belushi and Akroyd were born to play. Jake is cynical, wisecracking, and a total ham, while Elwood is utterly deadpan, serious but even tempered no matter what the situation. The thing about these two is that they're a couple of the nicest shmucks you'll ever meet- and at the same time a pair of irredeemable crooks. They pull every trick in the book, from giving false addresses (with excellent payoff) to sabotaging police cars. And these guys are the very definition of chutzpah. They actually manage to pass themselves off as the scheduled country western band at Bob's Country Bunker. And when Jake is confronted by hiss jilted would-be bride (Carrie Fisher), his pitiful recitation of clichéd excuses borders on the unbelievable.

The rest of the cast are also superb. Rays Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and even Cab Calloway show up as a preacher, a used instrument salesman, and so on. And of course they sing. Their numbers- including Respect, Shake Your Tail Feathers, and Minnie the Moocher- are truly spectacular and will likely have you tappin' your toes and singing along.

John Candy Does puts in good work as a bumbling, nice guy detective, and Twiggy is mildly amusing with the old dumb blond shtick, but the best casting decision just might be Carrie Fisher as Jake's psychotic ex. She's not the psycho-killer type, in which case there wouldn't be any joke, but from watching her Star Wars we know that she knows her way around a gun, so the character is believable.

Another of the film's main strengths is that it can find humor in anything. In writing the script, Akroyd and Landis have managed to inject comedy into situations as mundane as Jake's release from prison or Elwood quitting his job at the shaving cream factory. One of the funniest scenes is the brothers' meeting with the Penguin. Usually, a meeting with the nun who helped raise the main characters would be handled solemnly. But here, their language gets the boys in immediate trouble. Each curse provokes a rap on the knuckles, with in turn leads to more expletives, until the little old lady is swinging her yardstick around like a broadsword, while Jake and Elwood desperately try to avoid her wrath.

This movie also succeeds at something many critics have held to be impossible. It has car chases that are actually funny. Now I agree that there's nothing particularly humorous about watching cars chase each other at high speed. The humor comes from the characters' responses, whether it be Jake and Elwood's disinterested commentary on the stores they're plowing through, or Candy's priceless after embedding himself in the side of a semi truck. The filmmakers also understand the comedic potential of absurd overstatement, as with the Nazi bigwig's jaw dropping plunge.

What The Blues Brothers is really about though is the music. Besides the previously mention legends of R&B, the brothers themselves provide much of the soundtrack. What many people today don't realize is that the Blues Brothers were an actual chart topping band. There's no lip synching here; the actors are in fact playing their own music, and boy is it ever good. Their rendition of Wilson Pickett's Everybody Needs Somebody to Love is one of the most energetic, feel good pieces of music ever released. I truly envy the crowd that was packed into the Palace Hotel Ballroom for the filming of the main concert.

Any way you look at it, this movie is pure fun, plain and simple. Every high energy song and dance, every physics-defying chase, every one liner and deadpan piece of dialogue is wonderfully entertaining. The Blues Brothers will have you laughing in delight from beginning to end.