The Blues Brothers (1980) Review

There was a day when comedies were actually comedic. Only certain films brought the right combination of a great director, cast, and script. In the case of The Blues Brothers you can add a great soundtrack on top of that.

Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) Blues are brothers/musicians who are on a mission from God. That's their code for trying to raise money to save the orphanage they grew up in from foreclosing. After Jake is released from prison, he and Elwood start to bring their old band back together so that they can play a charity show to raise the money. Along the way they are chased by police, Nazis, a country band, a bartender and a mystery woman.

Written by John Landis and Aykroyd and directed by Landis The Blues Brothers is a fun picture that I can't get enough of. Usually I am so irritated by John Belushi that I want to punch him square in the jaw. That's not the case with his role as Jake. He brings his usual loudmouth slob down to a dull roar and if I as a film critic and not a music critic can say, he actually has quite a good singing voice. Aykroyd is Belushi's silent partner and straight man. His facial expression never changes and he never removes his sunglasses (Belushi removes his once) not even when it's 106 miles to Chicago and they have a full tank of gas and half a pack of cigarettes and it's dark. Sorry, I couldn't resist quoting one of my favorite lines.

There's about thirty cameos in the film (the best ones from such musicians as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Cab Calloway among others) and contains about five hundred and eighty-two car crashes (all within about ten minutes of each other). The best way to do cameos is not mention that the person is who they are. That's something that the filmmakers are aware of and play it beautifully.

I highly recommend this picture.

★★★