WB Rants: Blues Brothers 2000.

 Werebelushi:

Welcome back to Aykroyd-Mania.  Anyone who is a fan of my show knows I am a huge Blues Bros fan,  I even dress like them and that's why I called That Werebelushi In The Shades, however you don't need me to tell you how timeless the original is, true a lot of the original ideas Aykroyd had to be trimmed down but still...it all came together.  So what happens when a movie that initially didn't do well becomes a cult classic years later?  Then you get the idea to make a sequel of course.  My first question is, why?  Was it Aykroyd's idea?  Was it John Landis's idea?  This is worth a doubt the only really terrible John Landis movie I have ever seen,  I mean yeah I can understand why people hate The Stupids and Beverly Hills Cop 3 especially the latter and I can see why someone tend to forget that Susan's Plan exists, but I definitely think this is the only truly bad John Landis movie.  I mean I may be biased here since hes' a celebrity I will defend to the very end, and  I think what happened was awful considering the infamous deaths of Vic Morrow and the kids on the set of The Twilight Zone movie but I don't like that he was vilified because of it.  First of all it's dedicated to Belushi, John Candy and Cab Calloway (who passed away prior to this movie's release and were in the original) but we don't get an explanation as to what happened to Jake, all we know is that Jake died.  And also this movie came out in 1998 and has the number 2000 in it, because you know back in the late 80's and 90's it seemed like the 'hip' thing to put the name of a year which back then was the future but is now our past.

We see Elwood in prison just waiting to be picked up by Jake...only to receive the sad news that his brother has died.  Along with Curtis...noooo, not Curtis.  Poor Elwood. This movie follows the same plot as the original only this time Elwood has to do it on his own, at first...oh, but it gets better and by better I mean it doesn't.  Oh, did I mention that the rating for this movie is PG-13?  Woah,  this movie feels a lot more like it is trying to be for really dumb kids and families than anything resembling the OG.  So Elwood gets a new sidekick in form of Buster.  I kind of hate this guy and I kind of like him, yeah it's that cliche of the tagalong kid character that people either love or hate,  but he does have some good moments.  There are some good moments in the form of the song numbers which are all amazing and the soundtrack is one of the highlights after all.

There's one problem though,  Elwood needs a partner to be his Jake replacement. And who would that be you ask?  Why, one of the best things about this movie, John Goodman as Mighty Mack.  Originally this was originally to be Jim Belushi as Brother Zee but due to scheduling conflicts he had to drop out so that's how he got John Goodman. But hey, Goodman is amazing in this,  he's definitely got musical chops in him.  Since he and Dan Aykroyd have performed as Mack and Elwood before.  Not to mention he guest starred in a few episodes of the tv show Soul Man which of course starred Aykroyd.  He's definitely a highlight in this movie,  we also find out that Curtis has a son.  Okay, I want to see an alternate universe version of this which explains what happened.

The songs are good as usual but Aykroyd doesn't seem like his usual self as Elwood this time,  like he's doing an impersonation of Kermit impersonating Elwood.  The other problem is that it's basically a retelling of the first movie, right down to the exact same plot...only this time instead of nazis the boys are up against Russians and a freaky voodoo priestess.  I know this was in the original script (I know Aykroyd wrote it).   Speaking of which...what the heck?  The voodoo queen Mousette turning the band into zombies is a big lipped alligator moment if I ever saw one.  But don't worry, at least Dan Aykroyd and John Landis both acknowledged how awful it turned out.