**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway
screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis
directed by John Landis
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Long before Quentin Tarantino would run a tear across the super soul sounds of the '70s, there was the strange case of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in the deadly "Blues Brothers" affair. Sitting somewhere at the low end of White Negro trickle-down, the Blues Brothers were two conspicuously white soul singers who made up for in enthusiasm what they lacked in talent–though their "Saturday Night Live" clowning conveniently omitted this bit of information, half-expecting us to take them seriously as they tumbled and caterwauled their way through various musical numbers. Where a true hipster would have meticulously re-created their favoured forms, Joliet Jake Blues (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd) had nothing but "heart" and "sincerity"–a nice way of saying they were rank amateurs doing primitive karaoke. They were compellingly frantic performers, but they weren't the blues and never would be.
The limitations of the act became apparent in their cult darling of a feature film, produced for what was then a gross and unseemly amount of money. On television, Jake and Elwood merely did their bit, with the play as the thing and the stakes set fairly low; directed by the profoundly unsoulful John Landis, the movie found them careening across Illinois on a cheesy divine mission to clear a mission's tax debt while destroying as much property (public and private) as possible. The budget allowed the filmmakers to hire actual blues/soul/R&B stars to appear in supporting roles–that is, to play at setting laurels at the feet of people who weren't worthy to kiss their own. And it also permitted Landis to stage grotesque caricatures of black musical milieus, reducing to shrieking mannerism what was once a genuine outpouring of sentiment. Not as much fun as two guys goofing on late-night TV.
So after a nun (Kathleen Freeman) flogs Jake–fresh out of prison–and Elwood, Curtis (Cab Calloway) implores them to get religion. The stage is set for the first insult, dealt during a gospel number presided over by James Brown. One can see Landis and co. "doing black," having all the stereotypical testifying congregants dancing and singing like something out of A Day at the Races–yet the humiliated dancers still do it better than Jake and Elwood, who look like the pretenders they are. And so the film goes on, getting the genuinely talented backing band together to glorify two sweaty white boys unable to distinguish between r-e-s-p-e-c-t and presumption. Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and even John Lee Hooker are pressed into service, each of whom crushes what was a nice novelty act before fame and ego inflated it to ugly proportions.
Still, the movie is so completely out of touch with its material (and core human values) that its insane overblown professionalism becomes perversely fascinating. Jake's emergence from prison is a hyper-extended walk that would have John Shaft gasping for breath, and the rest of the movie is similarly overscaled, relying on massive Rube Goldberg car chases that lose sight of narrative, humour, or general sense. And let's come clean: my 13-year-old self thrilled to that element over and over again, with the climactic Chicago demolition derby seeming brilliantly surreal to uneducated eyes. But what hyperactive kids will consider the best thing they've ever seen is wearisome, especially in the extended edition, which includes a couple of new extraneous scenes and a whole lot more oppressive atmosphere. (For a detailed breakdown of the restored footage, click here.) Bemused enthrallment turns into rubbernecking as more things are destroyed for no discernable purpose; the blues take a backseat to the picture's roadshow scale, and more than the music gets lost.
Yes, it was 1980, the year of Heaven's Gate and the tail end of tolerance for autuerial extravagance, but at least Michael Cimino had a core of good intentions to mitigate his absurd spending spree. The Blues Brothers doesn't have one foot in what spawned the characters in the first place: a junior-high love of soul and blues. Once coked-up on fame and power, the participants collected their "authentic" musicians instead of glorifying them. They might have stolen their thunder had they not been such inept thieves–any film that suggests that the Brothers' limited singing voices could use Cab Calloway as a warm-up is not living on a planet I want to visit. A few bars of Hooker's "Boom-Boom" or the first two words of Franklin's "Think" call their bluff immediately, but this doesn't stop them from their collision course with missing the point. The result is undeniably bizarre, but as a curio and not a movie. It belongs in a jar, not on your DVD shelf.
THE DVD
Universal reissues The Blues Brothers on DVD in a 25th Anniversary Edition with the extended version on side one and the theatrical version on the other of this double-sided, dual-layered platter; both cuts are presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.* There are subtle variations between the way the two versions have been mastered, starting with how they're framed. Making its debut on the format, the theatrical cut leaves more headroom at the top (and vice-versa). Meanwhile, the extended cut has a smoother, subtler range of contrast and a more naturalistic palette. Clearly, less attention was lavished on the theatrical version (à la the studio's own Ultimate Edition of Legend), but sometimes less is more, as edge-enhancement is comparatively gratuitous on the extended version. Let's call it a draw. A Dolby Digital 5.1 remix gracing the extended version only is a generally creditable affair: While no sound cues truly stand out (though the subwoofer gets a workout every time something explodes), it's a clean, harmonious track that jumps to vivid life for every song and has absolutely no issues with clarity or sharpness. The theatrical version's Dolby Surround audio is, alas, not nearly as riveting or expansive. Extras are as follows:
SIDE ONE
"Stories About the Making of The Blues Brothers" (56 mins.)
J.M. Kenny gives us the origins and apotheosis of the Brothers, soup to nuts. The characters date back to before "SNL", when Aykroyd was contemplating the leap to the "National Lampoon Radio Hour"; an after-hours boozecan rave-up with Belushi spawned the sibling duo, and soon they went from a novelty act to cutting what would, depressingly, become the biggest-selling blues album of all-time. The assembling of the band–a combination of "SNL" horns and Stax/Volt die-hards–is dealt with in great detail, as is the lean away from rural Delta to urban Chicago blues. Then, of course, there is the shooting of the feature film, a flurry of permits, abandoned mall sets, and attempts to get Aretha Franklin to lip-synch. Especially notable are Cab Calloway's annoyance at not doing "Minnie the Moocher" in disco and Belushi's wandering away from the set to crash in the house of a perfect stranger.
Trailers for The Big Lebowski, Unleashed, The Interpreter, and The Ring Two begin immediately on start-up.
SIDE TWO
Introduction to the Film by Dan Aykroyd (20s.)
"Hey. Movie. Extras. Laugh it up," Aykroyd says. Well, not in so many words, but regardless.
"Going Rounds: A Day on the Blues Brothers Tour" (7 mins.)
Aykroyd, now flanked by Jim Belushi, performing at the San Diego House of Blues. One unfortunately realizes that Jim hasn't got the underplaying brilliance of brother John. He looks like an insurance salesman at a company party–and it goes downhill from there.
"Transposing the Music" (15 mins.)
After recapping the origins story (and a few more elements of the Kenny documentary), this goes straight into worship at the Blues Brothers shrine, with various incoherent assessments from participants and worshipful remarks from Jim Belushi and John Goodman. It's quite clubby and narcissistic, reaching a low point when somebody says, "Nobody did more for the blues than The Blues Brothers"–and it's the host of the House of Blues radio program. Did somebody say conflict of interest?
"Remembering John" (9 mins.)
This begins fruitfully with Judy Belushi-Pissaro remembering her high-school sweetheart (and his fateful jump from football to theatre), but gets somewhat more vague from there, with more gosh-he-was-great-isms than actual information.
Rounding out the package: some production notes (rendered largely redundant by the other features) and The Blues Brothers' original theatrical trailer.
*Also available in fullscreen
148 minutes (Extended Version)/133 minutes (Theatrical Version); NR/R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1/ English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-18; Region One; Universal
