Friday, November 20, 2009

The Blues Brothers 2000


The Blues Brothers 2000; Musical comedy, USA, 1998; D: John Landis, S: Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, J. Evant Bonifant, Joe Morton

In the first film, the Blues brothers saved an orphanage, but landed in jail. 18 years later, Elwood Blues is finally released yet finds out his brother died. He goes to his old orphanage, but there a nun gives him a little kid, Buster, to take care of him. Elwood quickly dresses him up in black suit and sunglasses, and together with bar owner McTeer decides to re-new his music group. They are also joined by an African American cop - their only fan, because they are again chased by law enforcers. In a swamp, they are hired by an attractive voodoo woman to play, but when the police arrives, it all ends in chaos: the Blues brothers continue their runaway.

Some grouchy viewers who superficially view it maybe won't be satisfied, but the sequel to the excellent comedy "The Blues Brothers" is a surprisingly solid film and has a similar style as the original. Who loved the first film, will at least mildly enjoy this sequel, even though it just palely imitates him. Still, the sequel was 18 years too late, which is why it wasn't especially too popular. The second thing that bothers are the too long music segments, so those who are not fans of Blues will gladly skip those minutes. The director, John Landis, once himself admitted in an interview that a director can't always direct what he wants in Hollywood, and it's obvious he did a much better job in the first film than in this second one, but in this case he did the best out of the situation, amusingly paying a homage to the first film with an unbelievable situation: with over 60 crashed cars on one pile, the movie set a record in movie history! Despite the unnecessary addition, the kid J. Evant Bonifant is solid, but another setback is the fact that James Belushi, the brother of the deceased original Blues brother John, couldn't play a part in this film, and was thus replaced by John Goodman.

Grade:+

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This was mysically important demonstrating some truly historical greats. So it wasn't War and Peace and didn't win an oscar. It was fun with the best musical climax I have ever enjoyed.

Marin Mandir said...

I actually liked this when I saw it the first time, but when I saw the second time, it all just seemed stale and predictible. The first film, however, is a true classic, I can watch that one a hundred times and it still seems to me like a blast, even today. And it had better music than this one.