Musical Mondays Week 42 Blues Brothers

[Cameron H. 23786]

We’re on a mission from God...to watch:

 

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Dudes and Dames, even exempting all the great comedy and the musical performances, this is a movie in which Carrie Fisher gets to wield a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and a machine gun.

 

AND we get to see dipshit neo-Nazis get their comeuppance. This movie is perfect.

[Cameron H. 23786]

I hate to be “that guy,” but while I liked B Bros just fine, my mind wasn’t, like, blown away or anything. I liked the music and the cameos, but for the most part, I found it kind of slow. For me, it was the type of movie that you enjoy with a quiet smile, but aside from the occasional chuckle, it never really rises above that.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I liked it, and I’d for sure watch it again, but I’d love to hear what makes it so beloved by so many.

[grudlian. 4725]

I hate to be “that guy,” but while I liked B Bros just fine, my mind wasn’t, like, blown away or anything. Mostly, I liked the music and the cameos, but for the most part, I found it kind of slow. For me, it was the type of movie that you enjoy with a quiet smile, but aside from the occasional chuckle, it never really rises above that.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I liked it, and I’d for sure watch it again, but I’d love to hear what makes it so beloved by so many.

This is my feeling as well. I don't remember laughing much just a quiet appreciation. The movie also feels long to me. I don't know what specifically you'd cut but this really doesn't need to be over two hours.

 

Sorry, Cakebug. I just think the movie is pretty good not perfect.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I hate to be “that guy,” but while I liked B Bros just fine, my mind wasn’t, like, blown away or anything. Mostly, I liked the music and the cameos, but for the most part, I found it kind of slow. For me, it was the type of movie that you enjoy with a quiet smile, but aside from the occasional chuckle, it never really rises above that.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I liked it, and I’d for sure watch it again, but I’d love to hear what makes it so beloved by so many.

Yeah sorry Cakebug, I have to third this sentiment.

[Cam Bert 8145]

Out of curiosity how many people watched the two and half hour extended version of this movie which features scenes of Dan Aykroyd parking the blues-mobile by some power generators in an attempt to explain its quasi-super abilities?

 

Bottom line, Dan Aykroyd is batshit crazy.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

This movie, for me, just sort of... invites me in to its world. I want to spend as much time as I can with these people. I appreciate how the movie lets the song performances go on for the full song length and I love every single one of them. I love all the cameos, from John Candy to Ray Charles, and I love the supporting characters, from Steven Wilson as one of the state troopers to Kathleen Freeman as Sister Mary Stigmata (the Penguin). And of course, Aykroyd and Belushi as Elwood and Jake. What I would say is that this movie does have too many endings and that the car crash gags go on for too long, but other than that, I AM INTO THIS MOVIE.

[Cameron H. 23786]

This movie, for me, just sort of... invites me in to its world. I want to spend as much time as I can with these people.

 

What about them make you want to hang with them? What do they represent to you? Is it their stoicism?

 

ETA: WE PICKED THE SAME QUOTE!

 

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

 

What about them make you want to hang with them? What do they represent to you? Is it their stoicism?

 

ETA: WE PICKED THE SAME QUOTE!

 

We are Quote Bros!

 

To answer your question, I had to really think about it. Jake and Elwood are so different from me (transient, unclean, artistically talented), but their genuine desire to do a Good Thing, to help the people around them, is endearing and makes them totally watchable, even as they fuck up. Even with they get that miraculous paycheck, the use all of it to pay the orphanage, to Ray, and to the band. They choose to stay poor to do the right thing because as long as they have each other and their music, they are happy. I think that's great.

 

Now if they can just not piss off Carrie Fisher, they'd be perfect...

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Another thing I appreciate about this movie, and as much as I love it, I also love the Blues. And if you have a movie about two white guys performing Blues covers, the concept of cultural appropriation is going to rear its head, even if this movie was made in an era before that term came to be. So where do these guys go first? The very first place they stopped at on their mission from God? An all black church, a place much of this music's ancestry comes from, being preached to by James "Godfather of Motherfucking Soul" Brown. They go on to get food from Aretha Franklin and instruments from Ray Charles. It's like they are gathering the necessary tools they need to commence on their Chicago hero's journey. They have to acknowledge their predecessors before they can venture forth. it's the hero's journey by way of Muddy Waters and Johnny Lee Hooker.

[Cameron H. 23786]

I guess my thing is, "Saving the Orphanage" is a pretty well-worn trope. I mean, it's a good one - which is why it's a trope - but it's not exactly original. Even the idea of outlaws fighting for justice for the less fortunate is really just the legend of Robin Hood. I guess I feel like the only thing that sets B Bros apart is the music, which is (admittedly) pretty fantastic, but otherwise, for me, it doesn't really stand out.

[tomspanks 9039]

Sorry, I don't love this movie either. I'm wondering if it's because I first saw it as an adult and I'm not too familiar with 70s SNL?

[grudlian. 4725]

Sorry, I don't love this movie either. I'm wondering if it's because I first saw it as an adult and I'm not too familiar with 70s SNL?

This is something I wonder but I'm not sure. I'm familiar with 70s SNL but certainly not an expert. I saw this as a kid and I think I liked it about the same as I do now. Maybe a bit less then because I didn't get any of the cameos (my parents had to explain Ray Charles was blind).

 

I see why people like this. I disconnect where I see this listed as one of the best comedies of all time or so many people love it. If this were a cult comedy or just respected not adored by millions, I would get it more.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I guess I feel like the only thing that sets B Bros apart is the music, which is (admittedly) pretty fantastic, but otherwise, for me, it doesn't really stand out.

I couldn't agree more. I chose not to rewatch this one because I actually used the movie budget I have this week on 2001 but the parts that really stuck with me are definitely the music and the scenes that have become iconic, which I would say rightfully so. I wonder if like tomspanks said that because of my lack of knowledge of 70s SNL humor does it not stick with me, but I can't even really say it's a generational thing if y'all gen x'ers are feeling the same kind of feelings I am. Also realizing I can't really say I don't get the 70s SNL humor if something like Land Shark still makes me giggle.

 

I will say that I do like this movie, but certainly can't say I loved it.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

I think that the comments about 1970s SNL are interesting because, being born in 1984, I am obviously too young to have watch it when it was on, but similar to my parents having Blues Brothers music on vinyl, they also had "Best Of John Belushi" and "Best Of Dan Aykroyd" on VHS. So like the music from this film, I was already familiar with bits like the Samurai Taylor, Land Shark, and the Aykroyd's bloody Julia Child. So I guess this movie was stacked in my favor. I mean, I have a sense memory of watching this movie in my room when I was 10 or 11 on my BRAND NEW TV (and by "new," I mean the then-25-year-old 12" wood paneled gremlin that my grandparents were about to throw away).

 

Even remembering that stuff now seems weird because my mom really does abhor violence and hates horror movies, but for some reason, bleeding-to-death Aykroyd tickled her funny bone to no end:

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I think that the comments about 1970s SNL are interesting because, being born in 1984, I am obviously too young to have watch it when it was on, but similar to my parents having Blues Brothers music on vinyl, they also had "Best Of John Belushi" and "Best Of Dan Aykroyd" on VHS. So like the music from this film, I was already familiar with bits like the Samurai Taylor, Land Shark, and the Aykroyd's bloody Julia Child. So I guess this movie was stacked in my favor. I mean, I have a sense memory of watching this movie in my room when I was 10 or 11 on my BRAND NEW TV (and by "new," I mean the then-25-year-old 12" wood paneled gremlin that my grandparents were about to throw away).

 

Even remembering that stuff now seems weird because my mom really does abhor violence and hates horror movies, but for some reason, bleeding-to-death Aykroyd tickled her funny bone to no end

My mom just wasn't the kind of person that was like, "Oh this is what you HAVE to see from my childhood!" She wasn't even the one who ended up showing me Star Wars it was my aunt and uncle, and then another one of her sisters is who introduced me to The Beatles. Like my mom just listened to what she listened to or watched what she watched and so by osmosis of that is how I got into SNL but it wasn't any of the older stuff it was what was currently on in the 90s. There are so many movies and shows that she loved that get referenced now and she's like "You have to have seen that" and I'm like "No... when would I have been introduced to a thing I'm not even sure I heard of until this moment..." Like It's Garry Shandling's Show! We watched the Judd Apatow Doc together and she was telling me about how she died laughing watching IGSS on TV and turned to me like I would have seen it and I was like "Mom... I was born a year before it ended... If you didn't show me this how would I have gotten the chance to watch it?"

[Cameron H. 23786]

I’m impressed with Donald “Duck” Dunn’s ability to smoke a pipe and play bass.

 

 

I used to smoke when I was in a band (also bass) and smoking and playing was super difficult.

[EvRobert 1684]

I am unapologetic and totally in love this movie. I wasn't really exposed to 70s SNL culture until the early 90s (right around the time I saw this movie, along with Animal House and Caddyshack--mid 70s-early 80s comedies were not something my parents watched). In the early 90s, Nick at Nite went on a run of showing Laugh-In, SNL, and SCTV. I devoured that kind of comedy (along with stuff like The Muppets that I did grow up on).

 

In fact, that's almost what I would compare this to, the first Muppet Movie. It's a road trip movie that has a loose plot, outrageous ending, and great music that is strung together by a series of vignettes. These movies seem to be more about stringing together characters and filling out the world (what some writers would call world building) without concern with a plot.

 

It's a style of comedy that either works or doesn't (Animal House, Caddyshack suffer from this too. I could go on; Porky's, Meatballs, etc. I think Ghostbusters and Fletch are the tail end of this type of comedy really working while almost ushering in their own style.)

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

In fact, that's almost what I would compare this to, the first Muppet Movie. It's a road trip movie that has a loose plot, outrageous ending, and great music that is strung together by a series of vignettes. These movies seem to be more about stringing together characters and filling out the world (what some writers would call world building) without concern with a plot.

 

It's a style of comedy that either works or doesn't (Animal House, Caddyshack suffer from this too. I could go on; Porky's, Meatballs, etc. I think Ghostbusters and Fletch are the tail end of this type of comedy really working while almost ushering in their own style.)

 

Your Muppet Movie analogy is a good one, and I completely agree. The style of "stringing together characters and filling out the world without concern with a plot" I think is also present in a movie like Wayne's World, moreso than Ghostbusters, so that extends the lifeline of this style a bit, but not by much. Comedies today really seem to be plot heavy with characters that go through necessary motions to serve the story. Blockers was very good, but it certainly had no character as memorable as Jake and Elwood, Wayne and Garth, or even Orson Wells's ten seconds in the Muppet Movie.

[EvRobert 1684]

Your Muppet Movie analogy is a good one, and I completely agree. The style of "stringing together characters and filling out the world without concern with a plot" I think is also present in a movie like Wayne's World, moreso than Ghostbusters, so that extends the lifeline of this style a bit, but not by much. Comedies today really seem to be plot heavy with characters that go through necessary motions to serve the story. Blockers was very good, but it certainly had no character as memorable as Jake and Elwood, Wayne and Garth, or even Orson Wells's ten seconds in the Muppet Movie.

 

I never thought about Wayne's World fitting into the mold but it does, probably more than Fletch or Ghostbusters, which are more plot heavy than character heavy. Those films have their moments of character moments that serve to build the character but almost always these vignettes serve the greater story. Blues Brothers, Muppets, etc. the vignettes nominally serve the story.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Comedies today really seem to be plot heavy with characters that go through necessary motions to serve the story. Blockers was very good, but it certainly had no character as memorable as Jake and Elwood, Wayne and Garth, or even Orson Wells's ten seconds in the Muppet Movie.

 

Can I say something that might be a bit controversial? I’m not really a fan of “comedies.” That’s not to say there aren’t comedies that I like, but it’s probably the genre I gravitate to the least. I think it’s because Comedy is a bit of a tightrope walk. One bad joke can ruin an entire movie, but one good joke won’t make it good. Comedies are also difficult to sit through when they’re bad. There can still be enjoyment found when you watch a bad action movie, but a bad comedy is unwatchable.

 

I think our experience with HDTGM Classics bears this out. The comedies have been the hardest to sit through.

 

 

[grudlian. 4725]

 

Comedies today really seem to be plot heavy with characters that go through necessary motions to serve the story. Blockers was very good, but it certainly had no character as memorable as Jake and Elwood, Wayne and Garth, or even Orson Wells's ten seconds in the Muppet Movie.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. So many comedies these days are very heavily improvised. Isnt it pretty widely acknowledged that pretty much every major comic actor has history in improv in a way they didn't before the original Upright Citizens Brigade crew changed things in the early 2000s? I wouldn't say Judd Apatow movies represent all of comedy, but his reach is long if you include all the movies he produces and they all have a lot of improv within them. I'm trying to think of the last outright comedy I saw that didn't have at least one run where it's clear they let the stars riff a bit. Even something like The House or Sisters which are two of the most structured plotted comedies in recent years have Amy Poehler doing her thing off script.

 

Muppet Movie, Ghostbusters and Wayne's World are all very structured and, to my knowledge, have no improv at all. Even Bill Murray has said (source forgotten) that people credit him with the best jokes in Ghostbusters but he credits his lines all to Aykroyd.

 

EDIT: Now that I think about it a little, Muppet Movie, Blues Brothers, etc are structured to feel loose without much plot. I'm sort of arguing something different because modern comedies are more plot based (typically) but improv within defined plot points. So, I don't know.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Seeing Toys R Us made me a little sad... I really wish they had decided to stay open but scale down to the size shown in the movie. I still think there’s a market for a brick and mortar toy store.

 

 

P.S. I worked at Toys R Us for a year or so in college. It was a lot of fun.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Oh man...

 

I was going to write a post about how fucked up it is Matt “Guitar” Murphy just sort of ditched Aretha (something they actually fix in BB 2000) when I found out that he just passed away.

 

RIP

 

[EvRobert 1684]

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. So many comedies these days are very heavily improvised. Isnt it pretty widely acknowledged that pretty much every major comic actor has history in improv in a way they didn't before the original Upright Citizens Brigade crew changed things in the early 2000s? I wouldn't say Judd Apatow movies represent all of comedy, but his reach is long if you include all the movies he produces and they all have a lot of improv within them. I'm trying to think of the last outright comedy I saw that didn't have at least one run where it's clear they let the stars riff a bit. Even something like The House or Sisters which are two of the most structured plotted comedies in recent years have Amy Poehler doing her thing off script.

 

Muppet Movie, Ghostbusters and Wayne's World are all very structured and, to my knowledge, have no improv at all. Even Bill Murray has said (source forgotten) that people credit him with the best jokes in Ghostbusters but he credits his lines all to Aykroyd.

 

EDIT: Now that I think about it a little, Muppet Movie, Blues Brothers, etc are structured to feel loose without much plot. I'm sort of arguing something different because modern comedies are more plot based (typically) but improv within defined plot points. So, I don't know.

 

I don't think every major comedic actor comes from that improv tradition, but they are certainly embracing it. Look at The House with Zouks, Amy P and Ferrell. Chock full of improv actors. Or Dirty Grandpa (again...with Zouks) or Neighbors with Rogan, or Baywatch or CHiPS. That's not to say I didn't enjoy some of these movies (I've watched The House a couple of times on HBONow and I think Neighbors (the first one) is pretty enjoyable). And I really enjoyed Jason in those two movies (easily the best part of Dirty Grandpa). I think there will be comedies of this era that are remembered fondly and others that aren't, like people forget about the National Lampoon follow-up to Animal House that was horrible (Class Reunion or something like that).

 

Comedy, like Cameron said, is such a tight tight rope to walk. I don't think a bad joke will ruin a good movie, but it's all in the structure.

 

I'm going to posit, that the National Lampoon style comedies of the 70s and 80s (including the non Lampoon films but made with their crew) are remembered today because we remember the CHARACTERS. Modern comedy films seem less interested in the characters then allowing the Apatow/UCB actors to riff on whatever joke that comes up.

 

Please don't get me wrong, I love almost all of these actors--but when I see Tom Lennon on TV or in a film or even on something like Bob's Burgers, rarely is he a character, he is always Tom Lennon riffing on a different joke. Whereas Belushi in Blues Brothers is a totally different character then Belushi in Animal House. Elwood is a different character than Ray. Out of that Era, Chevy is one of the few that is kind of the same character throughout his early film career. I was talking about this my occasional writing partner. He was working on a novel and kept going into these bigger and bigger ideas but couldn't figure out why the characters were doing what they were doing. I started talking to him about different types of books and what made these book series so successful (he was wanting to writing something like the Stephanie Plum books). I asked him to describe the plot of One For The Money and all he kept coming back to were the characters (incidentally, that movie is B-A-D bad.) The reason the Marvel movies work, in my opinion, is because they get the heart of the characters, even if the plots are kind of basic, as opposed to the DC movies which tend to focus on big plots. Wonder Woman worked because it was focused on her character and her relationship with Steve Trevor.

 

I think when improv works, it really works but film is such a limited medium in such a small time, that when you're just looking for the next joke and not where the source of the joke comes from (the character) it becomes a bit of mindless entertainment.

 

To me, t hat is why The League worked so well as a TV show. Yes, everything is improv through a structure, but because you have something like 42 hours with these CHARACTERS over five seasons.