The Blues Brothers (1980)

John Landis and John Belushi both have their own legacies.

Landis was an upstart director who specialized in slapsticky films like Schlock and The Kentucky Fried Movie. Belushi was a comedian who started as Second City then floursihed on "Saturday Night Live". Both men were passionate about what they did and seemed to love one thing: making people laugh.

They both seemed to hit the big time with the same movie - 1978's Animal House. It was a raucous, disorganized romp about a college fraternity that turned an uptight college structure on its ear. Ararchy was the key here: Landis could direct it and Belushi embodied it.

How fitting, then, that their next collaboration would bring both men's talents to the fore, and in a package of city-wide destruction, to boot.

Back in his SNL days, Belushi teamed with fellow comic and best pal Dan Aykroyd to put together a blues band during theri summer hiatus. Calling themselves The Blues Brothers, they actually were pretty good and received fan support and cut a best -selling album ("A Pocketful of Blues"). So, after the success of Animal House, they teamed with Landis to create what would become the ultimate in musical (and comedic) anarchy.

The Blues Brothers starts out with Jake Blues (Belushi) getting out of Joliet Prison (all this takes place in and around Chicago, Belushi's old Second City stomping grounds) to be met by his brother Elwood (Aykroyd). They are then guilte and bullied (correct terminology) by the sister (Kathleen Freeman) of the old Catholic orphan's home they were raised in to save it from foreclosure. From there on in, Jake and Elwood reassemble their old band and fight innumerable obstacles, old girlfriends (Carrie Fisher), Nazis (led by Henry Gibson), state troopers, country bands, SWAT teams and most all of the rest of Chicago to perform at a concert and raise said money and get it to the Cook County Assessor's Office on time.

From such a (semi-) basic story, Landis (who co-wrote with Aykroyd) created almost non-stop insanity, car chases, car crashes, destruction of buildings and more high-octane madness than the Deltas of Animal House ever thought of doing.

For a movie like this to succeed, you have to have an able cast. Starting with Belushi and Aykroyd, who act as though they are the coolest slobs on the face of the earth, the actors are top-notch. I already mentioned vets like Freeman and Gibson but the likes of John Candy, Charles Napier and Paul (Pee-Wee Herman) Ruebens also lend support. There are also comic turns by the unexpected like Fisher, Twiggy, Steve Lawrence and Frank Oz (just another director that Landis likes to cast in his films) that bring a smile.

But then comes the music! What an accomplishment to have so many huge names in the world of soul and blues in one film! Belushi and Aykroyd show that they have the chops with each number they perform, but they are also aided and abetted by such great ones as Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and John Lee Hooker, all of whom bring a boost to their music scenes (which there are plenty of). Not to mention the band Jake and Elwood themselves have; many music afficionados will recognize names like Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Donald "Duck" Dunn and Willie "Too Big" Hall. There are so many musicians and so much music that, yes, this would probably qualify as one of the funniest musicals you could ever see.

As far as the comedy goes, this movie owes a lot to the legacy of film-makers like Blake Edwards, whose Inspector Clouseau was destroying buildings and inadvertantly inflicting pain and agony years prior. You can see his influence, as well as that of The Three Stooges, and The Marx Brothers. Instead of having any pretense of plausibility, The Blues Brothers operates at the same level as a Road Runner and Coyote cartoon with plummeting falls, comedic collapses and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" thrown in for good measure. All that's missing is someone walking away from the carnage and making a wacky accordion sound with each step.

But what is this movie about? Music? Comedy? death-defying stunts? Toppling the pillars of decency with the squeal of burning rubber and the wail of a harmonica? Oh yes, it's all of that plus a travelogue of 1980s Chicago with Jane Byrne glowing endorsement (hey, if you're gonna destroy half a city, you'd BETTER have the mayor's okay).

Let's face it: there aere so many "important" movies out there and so many "comedies with a message" you could watch that it really helps the kid inside you to watch a movie that simply paints a portrait and sings a song dedicated to the good-old days of our youth when such supreme, grand-scale silliness brought big laughs. It's not overkill, mind you, if it gets a laugh.

In the end, this 27 million dollar live-action cartoon earned back MORE THAN DOUBLE its budget, further cementing the reputations of its creators. Oh, there would be successes later on for Landis (An American Werewolf In London, Trading Places) as well as Belushi (Continental Divide), but neither one of them would reach the same heights as they did here of success or hilarity. It's a sad footnote that Belushi would be dead of a drug overdose only two years after this movie. But then again, no better legacy can a man leave behind than the fact that he brought laughter to so many people.

And it's with that thought that The Blues Brothers serves as a fitting memory to Belushi, to Jake and Elwood, to music and to comedy in general.

See you next Wednesday.