Next on the list of movies I've deemed
important, and am forcing my teenage son to watch… 1980's 'The
Blues Brothers'. One of the reasons I am so intimately
familiar with this film is because sometime in the early 80's
our family finally got cable TV, and along with that cable TV
we got HBO. Heck yes. And remember this is old HBO
we're talking about, not today's HBO and Showtime which has
all kinds of shows and specials and documentaries to fill out
their schedule. No sir, Old HBO basically showed
movies. And there were only so many movies to
show. Thus The Blues Brothers and Urban Cowboy must've
shown six times a day, and damn if I didn't watch those movies
almost every time they came on. I can literally recite
all the dialog to both 'The Blues Brothers' and 'Urban
Cowboy'. Just so you know, 'Urban Cowboy' is not on that
list of important movies my son must see. Sorry John
Travolta. How does 'The Blues Brothers' hold up thirty
years later? Uh…
Joliet Jake (the late John Belushi) has just gotten out of,
well, Joliet prison I think and is picked up by his brother
Elwood (Vodka tycoon Dan Aykroyd). But back at the
orphanage where the boys were raised, Sister Stigmata
(Kathleen Freeman) has informed them that the institution is
about to close unless they can raise the prerequisite five
thousand dollars to keep it open. That 2.1 million in
2013 dollars. I've done the math. If they needed
five thousand dollars today, I could seriously scrape that up,
by myself, without destroying most of Chicago.
What are the Blues Brothers to do? Fortunately, God has
spoken to them, through Pastor Reverend James Brown, and has
told them that they need to get the band back together.
Easier said than done because the band has all gone their
separate ways, but fortunately
none of them saw fit to leave Chicago, but
they don't really trust the Blues Brothers all that
much. Particularly Jake. Hey… time for the first
scene of car crashes! At this point I inform my son that
at the time The Blues Brothers was one of the most expensive
movies ever made. He was privileged to see evidence of
this as Jake and Elwood completely wreck a shopping
mall. CGI wasn't invented yet so that was real live,
authentic property destruction that director John Landis got
to orchestrate.
When Jake and Elwood aren't directly destroying property,
there is mystery woman (Carrie Fisher) with a rocket launcher
also destroying property. This time they collapsed a
building. But back to the business at hand… getting the
band back together. Jake manages to con the band into to
joining him and Elwood in their 'Mission from God', while
running into legends such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles,
Chaka Khan, and Cab Calloway just to name a few. Also
while making many enemies along the way such as Illinois
Nazi's, the Good Old Boys, their parole officer (John Candy)
and every single law enforcement official in the state of
Illinois. But they are on a Mission from God. And
if there's as an ending sequence car chase scene longer than
the one in 'The Blues Brothers'… I don't want to see it.
So my son had a problem with 'The Blues Brothers'. He
made mention that Jake and Elwood, particularly Jake, are
essentially terrible people. They steal, they lie, they
cheat, they wantonly cause destruction of public property and
they don't seem to have lot of respect for anybody around
them. Even themselves. 'And we're supposed to be
rooting for these guys?' he would ask. Hmmm… that's a
solid point young man. I totally missed that the first
48 times I saw this movie on HBO back in the 80's. He
was also disturbed that there were 800 car crashes and nobody
died in this movie. Except maybe the Illinois
Nazis. That was an easy one to explain as the A-Team
factor was in full effect. He didn't understand the
concept. Ah… who cares what that punk thinks.
What I do know is that when Aretha and the girls broke down
with 'Think' to Guitar Murphy Dunne, I cried. There is
no substitute for that kind of artistry. And after Ray
Charles rocked the Fender Rhodes with 'Shake a Tailfeather' I
told the boy that he could actually stop watching the movie
now as two of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema are
now complete. We did keep watching because nobody really
wants to miss the Blues Brothers rendition of Rawhide and we
definitely wanted to catch a 178 year Cab Calloway rip 'Minnie
the Moocher' to shreds… but this is what I remember about 'The
Blues Brothers'. The music. Best musical
performances in a movie ever? That would be up for
debate, but 'The Blues Brothers', I believe, is at least in
the conversation.
The movie itself? Well… we do have a soft spot for it,
but the truth of the matter is that it's really a string of
disconnected nonsense the ends in car crashes. John
Landis might've been a little overrated as a film director as
he was able to ride the fumes of 'Animal House' to a very
lengthy career. Even movies Mr. Landis made that are
recognized classics say like 'Coming to America' or an
'America Werewolf in London' suffer under modern
scrutiny. 'The Blues Brothers' as well because as a
movie… that being a story that has a logical narrative and a
coherent plot… that's not this movie. And it probably
runs about twenty minutes too long. Think you could edit
twenty minutes worth crashing cars out this movie? I
think you could.
Revisiting it twenty years later… Maybe some of the love is
gone. But the music of 'The Blues Brothers' will live
forever. And that's the most important part of this
movie, if one were to ask me.
