There is a wide array of great songs in Blues Brothers 2000. A few more wonderful songs could have been added had they left out the plot and to be honest it would have been a great idea. The movie can be described as a weak comedy set against an energetic backdrop of blues and some pop rock and even country music. And don’t forget to wait until the end: James Brown adds “Please Please Please” after the end credits. It’s almost as if filmmaker John Landis had so much good footage of James Brown he was forced to use it, even if there was no space for the footage in the central storyline that revolves around the updates of the cast from the original 1980 film. “I always thought there was another story to be told,” Landis says in the film’s notes. Well, then tell it.
Jake Blues (the late John Belushi) is released from Joliet Prison and goes with his brother, Elwood, played by Dan Aykroyd, to the orphanage where they used to live. The first movie starts with their aunt Mary Stigmata taking care of them. The new movie starts with Elwood getting out of prison looking for the old nun who still beats Elwood for his impolite behavior.
Elwood wants to revive his old band. Sister Mary has another idea: He does some “mentoring” for Buster (J. Evan Bonifant), a 10 year old orphan. Buster gets his own Blues Brothers uniform, plays some harmonica, and gets Elwood arrested for… kidnapping. But what’s he doing in this story? Apparently Landis originally conceived the role for Macaulay Culkin. Culkin outgrew it, and Landis should have, too.
Elwood set out to reconnect with old friends which leads him to a strip joint where he meets Mighty Mack (John Goodman). Mack was a bartender who sang well, so he was hired as a replacement to Jake. Some other Minnesota band members were added later during an interstate chase of a state policeman (Joe Morton) who is more or less Elwood’s stepbrother (The dialogue spends a lot of time explaining that “more or less”).
The film that I can argue is the best, utilized locations in the Blues Brothers’ sweet home Chicago, but this one was filmed in parts of Toronto and they included a few shots of the Chicago skyline here and there. (Here’s a hint. Bars in the United States do not usually put up signs that say they are “licensed”.) This particular 1980 movie features neo Nazi bad guys. This one shows a right wing militia group with a leader who gives pep talks that are forcefully offensive. I’ve seen a pattern that is troubling among modern light comedies they seem to sprinkle racist language in the name of character development. There are some vile phrases, which do not require currency.
Unfortunately, I strayed from the emotion of the film, which is good blues music. As was the case with the 1980 film, that included Mississippi show stop bling numbers by Aretha Franklin and Cab Calloway. This has great Aretha (who can forget “R.E.S.P.E.C.T””) and Eddie Floyd , besides John Popper and Blues Traveler in “Maybe I’m Wrong,” Lonnie Brooks and Junior Wells with “Checking’ Up on My Baby,” and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band version of “Born in Chicago.” Best of all, as I said before, the numbers by guest artists outstripped those by the inscrutable Blues Brothers, including little Bonfanti, the girl singer who is backed up by a guarantee band. There is food for thought in the late great Junior Wells seen playing backup as a couple of comedians. It’s not so much that I didn’t enjoy their numbers as that… let’s face it, with backup like these guys get, Irv Kucinich and I could be the Blues Brothers.
It explains, “how the Blues Brothers destroyed Chicago’s musical heritage.” It opens in a smokey dive on the South Side, the true blues still live, and then looks toward North Side clubs where the true blues are merely Blue hair, and tarted, and smoothed Blues pay $8 to hear paid Blues music.
But surely it has always been thus? The best blues stems from deep Fuentes of emotions like depression and poverty. Lofty emotional payment is required to listen to blaring nightclub music. To entertain on expensive, two shows a night served. Blues heavy burden this are, is lunch. The To be an “authentic” professional blues musician ‘is’ amusing. The in the theater tell say “most important thing is sincerity, and if you can fake that, you made.
What the Blues Brothers do is worse than Eigg’s issue regarding the high end blues clubs. They take classical music and turn it into something they can exploit, all the while giving a small portion of credit to the real masters. If Junior Wells, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, B.B. King, and James Brown want to star in a Hollywood musical, they have to settle for being background singers for the Blues Brothers.
I’m not saying that Aykroyd and Belushi were not extremely entertaining with their music in the 1970s. It seems clear to me, however, that the Blues Brothers achingly dull schtick will bore many. In “Blues Brothers 2000,” I ended up caring about the orphanage, orphans, police cars, nuns and mentoring even less than I had before. More music, please.
It is said that the grand finale of “BB2000,” a talent show featuring many famed performers, including a somewhat baffled Eric Clapton, was legendary for improvisation. No doubt that I will. I would love to see that performance. But as a concert film. Without the car chase and without little children. And actually filmed in Chicago. In New Orleans would be alright, but not in Toronto. Toronto is not the home of the blues, or so I’ve heard.
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