Blues Brothers 2000 720p



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Blues Brothers 2000 720p
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Eighteen years after completing their &quot;mission from God&quot;, Elwood J. Blues is released from prison only to learn of the deaths of his brother and partner in crime, &#39;Joliet&#39; Jake Blues, and his father figure and mentor, Curtis, as well as the destruction of the orphanage he was raised in. With no family, no roots, and no life, a discouraged Elwood goes to meet with Sister (now Mother) Mary Stigmata. At this meeting, in addition to getting stuck mentoring a wise-ass orphan named Buster, Elwood learns of the existence of Curtis&#39; illegitimate son, Cable. Now determined to seek out the only family he has left and to reassemble The Band, Elwood, with the help of his new associate and lead singer, &#39;Mighty&#39; Mack McTeer, embarks on a death-defying journey that will pit them against the Russian Mafia, a Neo-Confederate Militia, the State Police and the FBI, and end with The Band competing in a Battle of the Bands competition against The Louisiana Gator boys led by B.B. King!
Elwood must reunite the old band, with a few new members, and go on another &quot;Mission from God.&quot;
The whole movie seemed like a throwback/tribute to the original. It didn&#39;t really try at all to stand on its own merits, it just came across as an excuse for the cast (most of whom were in the original) to relive the good ole&#39; days. Most of the scenes and plot points mirrored those of the original film. Aside from that, the signature clothing (black suit, black fedora, sunglasses, etc.) and the Bluesmobile, this movie is almost unrecognizable from the original film.<br/><br/>Out of the two stars of the original, only Dan Aykroyd survived to make this film. (RIP John Belushi.) Unfortunately, Elwood Blues must have gone to the grave with Jake Blues, because Dan Aykroyd&#39;s reprisal of his role is disgraceful. Elwood&#39;s voice, accent, mannerisms, and overall attitude have totally changed...for the worse. A once mysterious, serious, resourceful, and charming character has been warped into a worthless goofball, and this change sets the tone for the rest of the movie as well.<br/><br/>The original movie, though very funny, had a serious tone to it (at least the performances seemed that way), but Blues Brothers 2000 is just goofy and cheesy. The only thing that I can compare the goofiness/cheesiness to is a kids movie...which makes sense since one of the main characters of this movie IS a kid, &quot;Buster Blues&quot;. After visiting The Penguin from the original movie, Elwood gets stuck mentoring an orphan boy, Buster, who turns out to be a blues prodigy. Add John Goodman&#39;s equally goofy character, &quot;Mighty&quot; Mack McTeer, into the mix and you&#39;ve got a recipe for disaster.<br/><br/>The only things that saves this movie from being a 0/10 are the outstanding musical sequences (with the exception of Johnny Lang&#39;s &quot;contribution&quot;). With the exception of John Belushi, the original band is reunited in this film and they do not disappoint! The Blues Brothers Band and the various cameos from famous musicians throughout the movie are reason enough to watch it. The final sequence, a Battle of the Bands contest, is particularly good.<br/><br/>To Summarize: the movie sucks, but the music is great! Watch it at least once, especially if you&#39;ve seen the original.
The best way to describe the 1998 sequel &quot;Blues Brothers 2000&quot; is this: If the original 1980 classic was like hearing a really good joke told by a classic stand-up comedian with perfect timing and conviction, &quot;Blues Brothers 2000&quot; is like hearing that same joke re-told by a friend with far less charisma. Sure, the humor may still be there. Maybe even a little bit of the charm. But it&#39;s just nothing compared to the original, and it does lose a lot in translation.<br/><br/>It&#39;s too much of a re-telling of the original film, to the point that the label of &quot;sequel&quot; is an almost inaccurate term to describe it. It&#39;s startlingly close to venturing into &quot;remake&quot; territory. That being said, it&#39;s not without its strengths, and I do feel it&#39;s nowhere near the abomination and train-wreck that many make it out to be.<br/><br/>John Landis returns to direct this sequel, in addition to co-writing the script with star Dan Aykroyd. To make up for the absence of John Belushi and Cab Calloway, several newcomers are added to the film, including John Goodman, Joe Morton and J. Evan Bonifant.<br/><br/>18 years after the original film, Elwood Blues (Aykroyd) is finally released from prison, only to discover that his brother Jake and mentor/father-figure Curtis have both passed away. Seeking guidance, Elwood becomes a mentor to &quot;Buster&quot; (Bonifant), a 10-year-old boy, and seeks out Curtis&#39; illegitimate son Cabel Chamberlain (Morton), whom doesn&#39;t take well to the news that his true father was a man his mother had an affair with. After re-uniting with his former drummer, meeting a talented singer named Mack McTeer (Goodman) and running afoul of Russian gangsters, Elwood and the gang decide to re-unite their band to perform again.<br/><br/>The film, to its credit, does have a number of strengths.<br/><br/>The performances are a lot of fun. Aykroyd does come off as a slightly different character in this film, but I was able to go with it, as Elwood is 18 years older and contending with a different part of his life, dealing with loss and new beginnings. Goodman steals the show, though. His character &quot;Mighty&quot; Mack is arguably a surrogate and replacement for the late John Bellushi, but Goodman makes the role his own and has a lot of fun making the character different... someone who is not born a &quot;Blues Brother&quot;, but adopts the persona. Bonifant is a talented child-actor, and he does his best, but the role of Buster is a bit on the poorly-written side, and it feels like too much of a jumping- the-shark gimmick to add a child to the mix. But he does a good job. And Joe Morton is great as Cabel &quot;Cab&quot; Chamberlain, who is in pursuit of Elwood for much of the film, but may end up joining him under the right circumstances.<br/><br/>The music is also fantastic. Much like the original film, the plethora of song-and-dance numbers are perfect, and all feature good, old- fashioned choreography and imagery. They are the one part of the film that easily lived up to the original, if not slightly exceeded it.<br/><br/>And beyond that, many of the jokes do work, particularly an uproariously funny recall of the &quot;car pileup&quot; sequence from the original movie that plays like a deranged cartoon.<br/><br/>Those things being said, this is not a good film. It has just as many flaws as strengths, and due to the high quality of the original masterpiece, those weaknesses do stand out even more.<br/><br/>As mentioned above, I view the main problem of the film as its insistence to feel less like a sequel and more like a remake. I felt that too much of the film was devoted to references, callbacks, and even entire scenes lifted almost directly from the original. There are moments where this can work (the opening scene outside of the prison, the car-pileup, etc.) in more subtle ways or in ways that cause the film to do the opposite of the original. But this movie doesn&#39;t do that. This movie simply tries to constantly point out how similar it is to the first film, no matter how contrived or bizarre it may feel as a result. And when the film just isn&#39;t as well put together (as is in the case with this film&#39;s script), it makes it seem a lot worse than it is.<br/><br/>It also has a wide array of smaller issues with the tone, style and writing beyond the above issue. It feels far more sanitized stylistically, both due to the lower PG-13 rating and just because I believe Aykroyd and Landis were different people when they made this film. It&#39;s too... &quot;clean.&quot; Especially with the addition of a child- actor, which felt like too much of an attempt to soften the material and appeal to the family crowds that the prior film clearly wasn&#39;t going for. <br/><br/>I also found that many scenes felt jarringly out of place or cartoonish. Even though the first film had a lot of religious imagery and toyed with things like breaking the laws of physics and the whole &quot;mission from God&quot;... In this film, all of the more over-the-top ideas feel more random and it doesn&#39;t gel as well. (Including a bizarre scene where, without spoiling anything, a character appears to lifted from a church and transformed by heavenly light, or another scene in which a Voodoo Priestess exhibits various supernatural powers) It doesn&#39;t quite work.<br/><br/>Those complaints being said, the music is fantastic and the acting is a lot of fun for the most part. And I do think this is a fundamentally entertaining film (albeit also fundamentally flawed) for those reasons, and nowhere near the atrocity some have made it out to be. <br/><br/>&quot;Blues Brothers 2000&quot; gets an average 5-out-of-10 for me. See it for the music and try to ignore the rest.

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