Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) Review

rating: ****

the story: The band gets back together.  Again!

review: The original Blues Brothers was so iconic, and so closely identified with John Belushi, it was always going to be a tall order to make another one without Belushi, who had been dead for years by the time production began.  Blues Brothers 2000 became, as a result, a poster child of unwanted sequels.  It does not deserve such a reputation.

Filling in for Belushi are John Goodman and Joe Morton, who are nothing like the brash Belushi, but who nonetheless step into the act with Dan Ackroyd in such fashion that you really have to be committed to hating the results to hate.  Morton, a reliable hand who has never gotten his due in general, has an actual plot behind his character, an arc that culminates in a tent revival scene that has one show-stealing (and for me, movie-defining) song, "John the Revelator," leaning heavily into the supernatural elements that allowed the original band to survive all manner of '80s mayhem without a second's thought.  Watching Ackroyd in all this is to reconcile Blue Brothers with Ghostbusters, a logical leap that should also not be so difficult to manage.

But the real charm of Blues Brothers 2000 is that it actually features blues music!  The music here isn't just memorable pop songs from days past, but blues acts getting to sink their teeth into their craft.  You have the likes of B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Dr. John, and even Eric Clapton putting on appearances, plus Erykah Badu immersing herself deep into a character role, and Blues Traveler!  One has the idea that the whole point of the movie is celebrating these and other acts, to give back after the first one, and this is a most worthy cause.  To watch this one is to experience the world the brothers celebrated in the first one.  Is that really so hard to love?  These are both movies that are elaborate excuses to enjoy some good music.  They happen to have different vantage points, even if on the surface they look exactly the same.

I think it's well worth revisiting.