THE BLUES BROTHERS was/were a big deal in 1980, with the adventures of ‘Jake Blues’ and his brother ‘Elwood’ transplanted from skitch-life on TV’s Saturday Night Live, where they had been spawned from the musical tastes and otherwise irreverent mindsets of John Belushi (Jake) and brother-in-arms Dan Aykroyd (Elwood). SNL fame and then a #1 album sealed the deal for a frontal assault on the big screen. Aykroyd co-wrote the script (his first) with John Landis, who’d directed Belushi in National Lampoon’s Animal House and then took on that chore for this gonzo extravaganza. Big, loud and blithely uneven, the show runs 132 or 148 minutes, depending on which cut you either cherish or endure. Good gags mix with duds, festooned with enough wrecked police cars to cheer up the national prison population and doing more property damage than the Chicago Fire. Thanks to the era’s penchant for directorial and star-catered excess, buoyed by sufficient snorted cocaine to ensure everyone who didn’t know who the Vice-President was or who won WW2 could now pinpoint Bogota on a map, the production OD’d 36% over budget to a seizure zoning $35,100,000 (add $19,000,000 for distribution, $13,000,000 for advertising and who knows how much for cocaine). “We’re on a mission from God.”

The ‘plot’ has blood brothers Jake (paroled from stir in Joliet) and Elwood putting their old band together in order to gig up five grand and save the orphanage they were raised in from foreclosure. In their way (besides themselves) are hordes of pursuing State and local lawmen, an irked country-western act, a chapter of American Nazis and Jake’s former fiancée, gone rogue homicidal after he dumped her at the altar. Despite some distribution issues and the ginormous cost, the comedy-action-musical insanity careened into 11th place in North America, taking $57,230,000. The near-match haul of $58,000,000 from abroad papered the budgetary quagmire/nightmare.  Reviews ranged from dismissive to adulatory; the film (and the very idea of the Blues Brothers as a thing) developed worldwide cult status. A lot of fans cherish this opus, a destruction derby with a vibrant soundtrack attached.

“It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks.”

To each their own. Beheld in a the theater back in 1980, the jumble came off fitfully amusing; forced, bloated, overlong and overdone to numbness—and if memory serves, on a Saturday night out with my buddy Jay and his sweetheart Kath we were likely grassed up in expectation. A recent revisit (solo, via laptop, minus scattered cloudiness from Mary & Jane) didn’t Ala-alter an accurate assessment. The endless crashing of dozens of cop cars isn’t clever but merely witless and juvenile; the wholesale demolishing of a shopping center, supposed to be gleeful anarchy, comes off smug and stupid, smirk-jerk Landis & high-grade blow sniffers mocking the ‘uncool’ middle-America “straights”; Carrie Fisher (Aykroyd’s girlfriend at the time) as the rocket-firing mystery woman is a total dud; the American Nazi tie-in about as funny as…American Nazis.

The raucous tunes are the saving grace, energetically wailed across by the band (“Gimme Some Lovin'”,”Sweet Home Chicago”, “Jailhouse Rock”), and in honorific guest shot numbers from James Brown (“The Old Landmark”), Aretha Franklin (“Think”), Ray Charles (“Shake A Tail Feather”), Cab Calloway (“Minnie the Moocher”) and John Lee Hooker (“Boom Boom”). Toss in the theme from Peter Gunn, and a version of “Rawhide”.   “Did you get me my Cheez Wiz, boy?”

Cameos: Twiggy, Steve Lawrence, John Candy, Henry Gibson, Charles Napier, Kathleen Freeman (some laughs as a ruler-whacking nun), Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, Joe Walsh, Chaka Khan (belting with Brown), Stephen Bishop, Paul Reubens (pre-Pee Wee Herman) and Jeff Morris. The inevitable hope-it-works sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, tumbled into 1998.

“Don’t you “Don’t get riled, sugar” me! You ain’t goin’ back on the road no more, and you ain’t playin’ them ol’ two-bit sleazy dives. You’re livin’ with me now, and you not gonna go slidin’ around witcho ol’ white hoodlum friends.”  You tell ’em, Sister Franklin.