The Blues Brothers

After the death of Aretha Franklin, it was pointed out that her only movie roles were in the two Blues Brothers films. I had to stop and think if I actually saw the first one. I rented it off of Amazon and realized no, I had not seen it, even though it seemed like I had.

Based on characters created for Saturday Night Live, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd are the titular pair,Jake and Elwood Blues, in a film directed by John Landis. They play orphaned brothers who, upon Belushi's release from prison, endeavor to raise $5,000 to save the Catholic orphanage in which they were raised. This involves driving through a shopping mall, being chased by Nazis, the police, and a country-western band, and a mysterious woman (Carrie Fisher) trying to kill them.

Watching The Blue Brothers is a bit numbing. There are dozens of car crashes, so much so that they lose all meaning. There are some great musical numbers, by legendary performers like Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, and best of all, Cab Calloway singing "Minnie the Moocher." But Aykroyd and Belushi seem to think their characters are inherently funny in their get-ups and with their to-the-point dialogue (Aykroyd says "We're on a mission from God" with a Chicago accent way too many times). They're not really that funny. There are more laughs in one of Belushi's "Killer Bee" sketches than in all of this film.

I did particularly like one line, which is has become something of a classic; "It's 106 miles to Chicago. We have a full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses." There are also numerous but bizarre cameos, from a pre-Pee Wee Paul Reubens, to Twiggy, to Steven Spielberg (whom I didn't recognize). The Blues Brothers Band play themselves with some accomplishment. And, of course, there's Steve Lawrence in a sauna.

I think The Blues Brothers suffers because the brain trust of this film thought everything they touched would be gold. It was a hit, and would undoubtedly have been a franchise if it weren't for the death of Belushi. Instead they waited twenty years for The Blues Brothers 2000, a film that by all accounts should never have been made.