Director Report Card: John Landis (1980)

4. The Blues Brothers

Their origins are mired in legend. While performing together on “Saturday Night Live,” Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi would bond over their mutual love of music. Aykroyd was already a blues aficionado and Belushi soon developed an enthusiastic interest in the genre. Together, Dan and John rolled together a number of influences – Sam and Dave, John Lee Hooker, the Downchild Blues Band – to create the Blues Brothers. After debuting on “SNL,” the Blues Brothers would record a hit album. The duo soon began to conceive of a movie around the characters. Aykroyd wrote a sprawling 324 page script, explaining the deep lore around the Brothers, John Landis was brought in to wrangle Akyrody's vision into a shootable movie screenplay. Filming would go wildly over-budget and over-schedule, largely thanks to Belushi's mounting cocaine addiction, but a beloved comedy cult classic would be birthed in the process.

Jake and Elwood Blues, blues musicians with a relaxed attitude towards the law, are reunited when Jake is released from prison. They return to the Catholic orphanage they grew up in, where their mentor Curtis gave them a love of the blues. The orphanage is facing closure unless they can pay $5000 in property taxes. Forbade from earning the money through criminal acts, the Blues Brothers decide to reunite their band. As they set out to retrieve the band members and gather the funds, they attract the attention of the police, Neo-Nazis, a pissed-off country-and-western band, and a mysterious woman with murderous desires. All these forces lead the Brothers on a wild chase across Chicago.

In many ways, “The Blues Brothers” is an evolution of the ideas Landis and Belushi first explored in “Animal House.” This is, essentially, another slobs vs. snobs story. There's even a key moment that distills the entire “slobs vs. snobs” premise into several minutes. Jake and Elwood go to an expensive and exclusive restaurant, hassling the rich customers with commoner antics. The big difference here is you don't feel any guilt for rooting for these slobs. The Blues Brothers are legit underdogs, that attract negative attention everywhere they go simply by following their nature. Most importantly, these guys are trying to save an orphanage. Motivation can't get much more noble than that. Unlike the booze-and-sex hungry Delta House Boys, the Blues Brothers are pure. They are, as is simply put on multiple occasions, on a mission from God.

“The Blues Brothers” also sees the purest expression of John Landis' anti-authoritarian attitudes. The Blues Brothers are, after all, being chased by the cops for almost the entire movie. The police are depicted as buffoonish brutes who wreck just as much havoc as the criminals they are chasing. A good example comes in the extended finale, where the cops employ machine guns to cut through a door... Blocked by a simple wooden bench and some trash cans. And I don't think it's any mistake that the other bad guys of the movie are Nazis and shit-kicking good ol' boys. The antiheroes of the film are opposed by an oppressive, racist system designed to enforce the status quo. It's also probably no mistake that the white heroes surround themselves with black faces and talent.

“The Blues Brothers” is also another examples of a movie brat director trying to make an entry into that beloved but, by 1980, largely unpopular genre: The musical. Showtunes are about as un-hip as you can get but “The Blues Brothers” draws its music from classic soul, rock, and blues (duh) music. The result are a series of impressively energetic musical numbers. James Brown's performance of “The Old Landmark” is absolutely bursting with propulsive energy, the Godfather of Soul singing his heart out – like always – while accompanied by some inspired dance choreography. Ray Charles' likewise rattling performance of “Shake Your Tail Feathers” is also joined by a number of spontaneous dancers outside. Jake performs somersaults during the Brothers' performance, showing how infectious the upbeat vibe of the music throughout the film is.

A lot of the great moments in “The Blues Brothers” amounts to pointing the camera at naturally gifted singers and dancers and letting them do their thing. Yet Landis also incorporates comedy into the musical numbers. Musicals are, when you think about, surreal by their very nature. People don't usually burst into song and dance in real life. Springing off of the otherworldly quality inherent in the genre allows Landis to create some moments of absurd comedy. During Brown's number, the voice of God directly touches Jake and dancers bounce up towards the rafters. Aretha Franklin's number is supported by random people becoming her back-up dancers. When Cab Calloway leads the Blues Brothers Band in a rendition of “Minnie the Moocher,” everyone is suddenly transformed into a glitzy night club act. The Penguin, the mother superior of the orphanage, floats backwards through a door in a spiritual manner. Landis twists the rules of the genre to craft amusing bits of wacky humor.

“The Blues Brothers” is also the director's sharpest directed and edited film up to this point. There's a sureness to the direction that we were only beginning to glimpse in “Animal House” and “The Kentucky Fried Movie.” As Jake is walked out of the prison, we see his approach from multiple angles. Carrie Fisher's mysterious woman is usually shot in shadows, lights highlighting her eyes, a move out of classic noir and horror. Johnny Lee Hooker's performance of “Boom Boom” technically isn't much more than him sitting and singing but the fast-paced cuts and selective shots make it an invigorating moment. The same can be said of Aretha Franklin's performance of “Think,” in which singing and stepping around a dinner becomes as impressive as the other dance numbers. “The Blues Brothers” is just a really impressive looking film.

Maybe there's a reason “The Blues Brother” looks so much sharper than Landis' previous films. It's not just a musical and a comedy but also a massive action movie. The car chases in “The Blues Brothers” quickly gained legendary status. More than once, Landis straps the camera to the hood of the speeding cars. The final chase through Chicago is amazingly thrilling, the director seemingly attempting – and maybe succeeding – at topping “The French Connection.” The Bluesmobile, neigh indestructible until it gets the guys to their destination, sails through the air, over ramps, and clips other incoming vehicles. An early race through a shopping mall shatters walls, glass windows, and store displays. Cars spin across concrete to the point that, even simple moments like the Bluesmobile parking outside a club, become acts of impressive vehicular stunt work.

Those epic car chases and crashes are, really, just another manifestation of “The Blues Brothers'” exaggerated universe. The film's physical comedy gags tend to be massive. This casual attitude towards the rules of physics is established early on, when the Bluesmobile jumps a bridge within the opening minutes. The apartment building Elwood lives in is detonated, the entire front half of the building collapsing... After which everyone calmly pulls themselves from the wreckage and walks off. A similar gag has the duo surviving a massive fireball rocketing the phone booth they are inside into the air. By the time we get to the record-breaking police car pile-up or the Nazi's station wagon plummeting a thousand feet out of the sky, we see that Landis has exploited the film's big budget to make progressively more massive acts of Looney Tunes physical comedy.

To learn that Dan Aykroyd dreamed up an elaborate backstory for his characters is not surprising. Not just because Dan Aykroyd is famous for doing that stuff but because we can see that detail reflected in the film. We only learn a little bit about Elwood and Jake's long history, tantalizing peeks at a larger world. This obviously feels like only one chapter in a longer story. There's also a similar level of physical detail in the movie. Elwood's crammed apartment is a masterpiece of production design. The Chicago setting is richly brought to life, the rundown clubs and inner city locations seemingly totally lived-in and thriving.

All of “The Blues Brothers” wackiness probably wouldn't have worked if we didn't have two central characters we could root for. Jake and Elwood represent two fine comedic performances at the peak of their ability, giving us their best. Dan Aykroyd brings all his eccentricity to the part of Elwood, that particular cadence of speech seeming totally natural. Dan is a detail obsessed nerd, so he fits right into the role of a man so determined to follow his path, that he doesn't even see the laws he's breaking. Belushi, meanwhile, plays Jake as a frequently grouchy rebel and con artist, who uses his wily wit to squirm his way out of trouble. These two love what they love – music, their makeshift families – and are determined to protect that. The particular details match up beautifully with both men's comedic personas.

A series of high profile cameos are also included in “The Blues Brothers,” to further cement its status as an event movie. Carrie Fisher is, by far, the funniest one, as the murderous stalker pursuing the duo. Fisher's utterly self-assured body language sells the comedy of a woman determined to exterminate Jake with extreme prejudice. Cab Calloway projects a sense of warmth and mischievous fun, before totally blowing the roof off with his performance of his trademark song. John Candy brings a jovial element to one of the cops chasing the Brothers, who seems to always be smiling even when things get extremely crazy around him. Twiggy's brief role is a pretty solid gag, as if Henry Thomas – reappearing from “The Kentucky Fried Movie” – as the leader of the Illinois Nazis. Also watch out for random cameos from Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, and a “See You Next Wednesday!” billboard.

After a chaotic production, “The Blues Brothers” would face further troubles during post-production. John Landis would bicker with Universal over the film's length. His preferred version ran almost two and a half hours, which Universal managed to talk down to 133 minutes. (The director's cut is definitely excessive but just as fleet-footed and fun as the shorter version.) Some theater chains refused to play the movie in “white” neighborhoods, for fear the film's blues performers would attract largely black audience. Really! Despite these thresholds, and a bloated budget, “The Blues Brothers” would become a box office success. Countless television airings and video rentals would make the movie a cult classic too, fans coming back over and over again for its lovable characters, amazing music, and hilarious comedy. It's a film that always leaves me smiling. [Grade: A]