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On a mission from God
Kathy Hofmeyr
Posted Thu, 08 Feb 2007
Jake: First you traded the Cadillac in for a microphone. Then you lied to me about the band. And now you're gonna put me right back in the joint!
Elwood: They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God.
This exchange from 'The Blues Brothers' says pretty much everything you need to know about the film. It’s wacky, extreme, sly, rambunctious and completely absurd. And it is willing to sacrifice just about everything to the gods of Cool and Comedy — who shower upon it their grace unto a hundredfold. Or something.
For those culturally impoverished enough not to have seen John Landis’ ('An American Werewolf in London', 'Coming to America', 'Trading Places') groundbreaking 1980 classic comedy, here's the premise:
“Joliet” Jake Blues (the late, great John Belushi) has just been released from prison. His brother, Elwood (a very young, thin Dan Aykroyd), picks him up in the Bluesmobile — a converted cop car. They go to visit the orphanage in which they were raised, where “The Penguin” (a truly horrible nun played by Kathleen Freeman) tells them that the orphanage owes $5000 in back taxes. If the money goes unpaid, the orphanage will be sold.
Jake and Elwood head off to church, where Jake is struck by a ray of holy light during a particularly charismatic sermon by Reverend Cleophus James (played by James Brown — yes, the James Brown) and decides that he and Elwood have been given a mission by the Lord: to get their band back together, stage one big concert, earn the five grand and save the orphanage.
Easier said than done. Along the way Jake and Elwood manage to incite the fury of, variously, the entire State Police force, a chapter of Illinois Nazis, a vicious band of musicians called The Good Ol’ Boys (“We got both kinds of music — country and western!”) and a Mystery Woman (Carrie Fisher, fresh from 'The Empire Strikes Back') with a flamethrower and a clear vendetta against one or both of the brothers.
'The Blues Brothers' was the first 'Saturday Night Live' skit to become a full-length movie (its successors include 'Wayne’s World', 'Superstar' and the delightful 'Office Space' — watch this column for an upcoming rhapsody on the joys of that particular comic masterpiece). Aykroyd and Belushi toured with their co-star musicians as The Blues Brothers Band both before and after the film’s release and recorded several extremely good blues albums.
would like to be
remembered as a best-selling author, a little-known blues singer and perhaps someone’s favourite aunt. She lives in Jo’burg with her dogs, two pure-bred mongrels named Harpo and Buffy.
Got something to say about The Maguffin? Email her!
The movie is a comedic and musical free-for-all. Although it resembles a classic musical only in the loosest possible sense, its occasional bits of dancing contain such choreography as would move Michael Kidd (or even Michael Jackson) himself to bow his head in sheer deference. The cast runs the gamut from Aretha Franklin to Ray Charles to Cab Calloway to John Lee Hooker to Chaka Khan (all of whom sing) to cameos by John Candy, Bill Murray, stick-insect '60s model Twiggy and, at one point, a very young and weedy Steven Spielberg.
The lead characters themselves skate the edge of that very thin line between unbelievably cool and irretrievably geeky. They are followed everywhere by Henry Mancini’s 'Peter Gunn theme' (performed, of course, by the Blues Brothers). The perpetual trademark black suits, black fedoras and sunglasses (which never come off, even when they sleep) have become as iconic as the Darth Vader suit or the Bates Mansion. The Blues Brothers are more like cartoon characters than real human beings, causing havoc wherever they go — but adorable nonetheless.
The film has nary a dull moment. The comedy is tight, priceless and occasionally surreal. The musical legends alone would make this film worth it, but when you're not falling down laughing or tapping your feet, you're being treated to the greatest car chase of all time, bar none. Or perhaps you're doing all three at once, which is perfectly possible.
You may think you’ve seen car chases. You may even think you’ve seen a great car chase. But until you’ve seen 'The Blues Brothers', you are simply labouring under the misapprehension that anything less could possibly constitute a car chase. At the time the film was released, it held the record for the most cars ever crashed in the making of a movie. Whether or not it still holds that record I don’t know, but I have yet to see a demolition derby to match it.
The car chase, one could say, begins about twenty minutes into the film when, after being stopped by the cops, the Bluesmobile destroys a mall from the inside (think John Hurt in 'Alien' — with the Bluesmobile as the baby alien and Hurt as the mall). In between the plot, the music and the jokes, the chase continues little by little as at each stop Jake and Elwood pick up both speed and pursuers. The last forty minutes, which begin with the exchange:
Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.
… are pure, joyous mayhem — overkill raised
to an art form.
Although 'The Blues Brothers' isn't a classic musical, a few elements occasionally slip in. Most of the songs are there because the plot demands or justifies them (Ray Charles just has to show them that the piano in his music shop works; Cab Calloway as Curtis has no choice but to do something to placate the impatient audience when the main act is late). The songs aren't there just because people spontaneously break into song and sing their dialogue to one another — except in one scene. Aretha Franklin as Mrs Murphy, unwilling to lose her husband to a life on the road, belts out her classic 'Think' in the Soul Food Café in the hopes of persuading him. In precisely the sort of bizarre circumstance one expects from musicals, the Brothers join her chorus of 'Fame'-style backup dancers.
One of the things I most love about this film — oddly enough — most would consider a flaw. In most musical films, the actors lip-synch to pre-recorded songs (their own, if they’re Gene Kelly; someone else’s if they’re Audrey Hepburn). But while this is routine for the rehearsed, sweet and romantic but slightly bloodless Classic Hollywood types, not so for your great blues singer who never does a song the same way twice. If you’ve heard Frank Sinatra sing 'The Lady is a Tramp' once, you’ve heard pretty much every rendition he ever recorded, but when Aretha sings 'Respect' or 'Ac-cent-chu-ate the Positive' or, for that matter, 'Think', it’s fresh and original and virtually reinvented every time as she riffs and improvises on a well-worn theme. The Soul Food Café scene was eventually spliced together from many, many takes in which her lip-synching almost matches the song. But you can still see it if you look: plain evidence of a blues virtuoso, a genius at work.
Recently re-released on DVD with extra scenes, 'The Blues Brothers' is about as much fun as one can have sitting up. You will laugh. You will cry (from laughing). You
will want to join a band and make your car fly. And if you don’t, well, then you just ain’t got no soul.
