Okay, here's the deal. I feel a little like Don MacLean, but, here goes my little slice of American Pie, like it or not. A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music played. I remember the first time I saw them, late one Saturday night, on my momma and daddy's color TV in the living room. I was sitting in my daddy's big ol' easy chair, and there they were. Two of the show's stars, in identical clothing, but they were being introduced as some new characters other than themselves. "Cool," I remember thinking, "a new sketch." Then the band behind them kicked it in, and I said to myself, "Self, they gonna actually sing here?"
And they did. And, you know, they weren't too bad at all. Actually, they were pretty good, if you want to know the truth. The big guy had a harsh, back-alley voice, and what he lacked in vocal stylings he more than made up for with brute force. He flipped, did cartwheels, danced like a maniac, and sang like Joe Cocker meets Ray Charles, siphoning up sounds from somewhere below his shoelaces sometimes. The tall skinny guy played it quiet, dancing an odd lil' sidestep, doing some harmonies, and, lo, when he opened the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, and pulled out that harmonica, he became a power to behold. He blew hard, he blew raw, and he blew the blues like a pro.
The characters grew to legends. They cut an album that sold like hay-ull. Then the idea arose to give these guys a story and see what happened. The movie The Blues Brothers became a cult classic, and the soundtrack album blew to the top of the charts. It's extremely hard to fathom that it was eighteen years back that I eyeballed that movie for the first time, and had the phrase "over the top" redefined for me. Great music, incredible stunts, HUGE car chases, lots of celebrity cameos (including a young whippersnapper as the "Cook County Assessor's Office Clerk" you may know, some kid named Spielberg...). It was a darn funny story about two guys trying to save their childhood orphanage, and the heap o' trouble they spawn while doing it.
Now, two decades later, the story continues in Blues Brothers 2000, the new film starring Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman, and, while this sequel might be satisfying to the fans of the first movie, there's just something missing, that one ingredient that, for however hard they tried, they never stood a chance of recapturing.
The story starts as Elwood J. Blues is getting out of prison, having served his time for all the crap caused in go-round one. Upon his release, he's told the news of brother Jake's demise. Elwood decides to put the old band back together. Finds a new lead singer in Mack McTeer (Goodman), an unassuming stripjoint bartender with a righteous voice for the blues. Then, like before, the rest of the band is tracked down, and, despite those same old misgivings, they hitch on for another ride.
Elwood also brings two others along. His old schoolmarm, Sister Mary Stigmata, hooks him up with a 10-year old kid named Buster (J. Evan Bonifant) for "mentoring," but Elwood quickly converts him to the world of the blues, black suits, and Ray Bans. His long-lost "stepbrother" Cab, played by Joe Morton, is a commander in the Illinois State Police, but he too undergoes an epiphany and joins up. The guys head to a Battle of the Bands competition in the Louisiana bayou, at the plantation of a voodoo priestess named Queen Mousette(R&B star Erykah Badu), so they can earn back their long-lost rightful greatness.
Thin plot? Kinda familiar? Agreed, but it sets up some great music spots, just like the first one did. You won't believe some of the cameos here. Aretha Franklin and James Brown return, and they're joined by Sam and Dave's Sam Moore, Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd, and B.B. King, just to name a few. I'll give you a hint though, if you promise not to tell..... Good. Here goes: Look very carefully at the band the Blues Brothers have to play in the big Battle of the Bands. The Louisiana Gator Boys, as they are called, is a virtual Who's Who in the world of R&B music, and this last-act extravaganza helps forgive a lot the shortcomings that you have to sit through to get there. And, let's not forget the vocal work of both Morton and Goodman. Goodman has a great blues growl, and his singing fits tight into Aykroyd's harmonies. Morton pops in with a surprising smoothness. He has a cool Lou Rawls-style, a jazzier Lou Rawls, if you can hear that in your head. He's a melody mixed into the grind, and it's a nice addition.
There are some truly dead spots throughout this thing, some big enough to drive a few police cars through. Director John Landis has stated that, when this project first started taking shape, the role of Buster was tailored for Macauley Culkin, but, when the filming actually started, he was far too old for the part. As good as Bonifant is in the part, it should have been axed. It gets in the way, and all credit to the kid for his singing and dancing and dead-on Elwood impression, it's just plain unnecessary. As unnecessary as the self-parody (at least I hope it was a self-parody) police car pile-up, trying to rival the one from the first movie. It becomes silly and draws out far too long. Move along, Mr. Landis...nothing to see here. Move along.
But the missing ingredient here is not really the fault of Landis, or Aykroyd, or Bonifant, or anyone else in particular. What's missing here is the Eyebrow. John Belushi, Lord love him, could throw an eyebrow better than anyone ever in the business, and, with the Eyebrow came The Danger. The first movie had a dangerous feel to it, and it earned it's R-rating with that feel. The characters of Jake and Elwood were dangerous, they were subversive. They did whatever it took to get the band together and get back on the road. If that meant wrecking a few cars, or offering to buy little girls in a haughty French restaurant, so be it. Jake ate like a pig, Elwood stuck to his dry white toast. They drank heavy, they lied, they cheated. And, yes, they got shot at by angry girlfriends and "Illinois nazis" and rednecks and cops and Army guys and SWAT teams.
This time out, though, the Blues Brothers are like a nineties version of themselves. Elwood, Mighty Mack, Cab, and Buster are PG-13 tame here. Mack, who's supposed to fill the Jake space, is only acting like a "bad guy." He is really shy and doesn't want to get in any trouble. Pfffftz! Does that even sound like the Blues Brothers? Elwood speaks more than he ever has, which also takes away from the "silence" that made Elwood so legendary. This is like a politically correct, prime-time TV version of what used to be. Before, there was a Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time, angry, mean-spirited humor that drove the whole movie. Now, it just kind of lays there, waiting for the happy laughs to fall where they may, and it hurts the whole spirit of the Blues Brothers. The fans of the first movie are looking for the four fried chickens and a Coke, the throwing shrimp across the table, the chicken-wire around the stage of Bob's Country Bunker. We want The Danger! We want The Eyebrow! And, sadly, the Danger went away when Belushi checked out early.
I wish the Movie Gods had allowed this sequel to happen around 1985 or so, while the memories were still fresh, while John's spirit was still a driving force in The Blues Brothers aura. Allowing 18 years to go by was a mistake. Aykroyd has gone up and down the Hollywood ladder, and the spirit of the blues that he and Belushi preached is now a chain of trademarked nightclubs across the country. Hopefully the kick-butt soundtrack will inspire some new albums with this new Blues Brothers Band, and the mystique can grow a new appendage. And, then, maybe, just maybe, they can find a little Danger before they try another movie.
Blues Brothers 2000 carries a heavy load of baggage into the arena, and, yes, at times, it stumbles under the load. The opening frames of the movie come up as black, and, in white letters, the words come up, "For John Belushi, Cab Calloway, John Candy." And, try as they might, they just can't exorcise these spirits. The memories of the subversive past are too powerful to beat by a candy-coated happy-ending movie like this one. It's a valiant effort, and it has its moments, but in the long run, it just doesn't satisfy the taste we were craving.
Image copyright Universal Pictures.
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under the knife