Defend the Indefensible: The Blues Brothers

I thought it was Roger Ebert, but I didn't see it in his review (which is online).

lol this is now going to drive me nuts >:(

ha this is playing at the Castro next week and my daughter expressed interest after seeing the Aretha clip, maybe we'll go

xp It wasn't Janet Maslin. She panned the film btw, only complimenting Aretha Franklin's performance (and said even that scene was badly edited).

when i was growing up i never knew it could possibly have been panned, since it's generally really entertaining and funny and the music is good (albeit the loosest definition of the blues.) I guess I get it now, but I don't agree. sure the car pileup comedy isn't really funny, except in the absurd sense. but the BBs underplaying everything while it goes to hell around them still works.

i like how it's pretty respectful overall, even if the respect is often awkward. and it's still refreshing to see a movie where there's zero "scary" bits involving the inner city scenes (cf. Adventures in Babysitting, Animal House, any number of other films too numerous to mention.)

the most (comedy) tense bits involve a nun, a country bar (that's a different kind of problematic, i agree), the cops, and a fancy Near North restaurant.

the nun is of course Kathleen Freeman, of Jerry Lewis' rep company and Singin' in the Rain ("rrrround tones").

oh WOW I had never made that connection!!

and I watch Singin in the Rain once a year :(

She also in the Americanized Broadway musical of The Full Monty with terminal cancer, and stayed with it until 5 days before her death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Freeman

She panned the film btw, only complimenting Aretha Franklin's performance (and said even that scene was badly edited).

supposedly the performance part of the Aretha scene came out the way it did was that she had problems nailing both the lip-syncing and the choreography (something she'd never had to do to such a degree before or after), so they had to kind of edit around her at times when they just didn't have usable footage for certain parts.

and also, Landis cut off the sax player's head. (foreshadowing of Vic Morrow)

*rimshot*

It's interesting to read what the early-80s NYC media had to say, but please...the Blues Brothers (and Landis etc in general) is a classic example of a chasm between critics and ticket-buyers.

isn't John lee Hooker onscreen for about 45 seconds?

this was enough to make quite an impression on young me

And he's not on the album?

Nope. With the exception of "The Old Landmark" (James Brown with the Rev. James Cleveland Choir), everything on the soundtrack album is recorded by the Blues Brothers band, either with Belushi & Aykroyd ("She Caught the Katy," "Gimme Some Lovin'") or with whichever guests (Aretha, Ray, Cab Calloway).

None of the other songs in the film -- Sam & Dave, Fats Domino, John Lee Hooker, Louis Jordan -- are on the soundtrack record.

Posted upthread:

LANDIS: What’s important to remember about that movie is, it was John and Danny’s intention to exploit their own celebrity of the moment, and focus a spotlight on these great American artists because rhythm and blues was in eclipse. To give you an idea, MCA Records, Universal Records, refused the soundtrack album.
DEADLINE: Why?

LANDIS: They said, who’s going to buy this music? And then, one of the great accomplishments of The Blues Brothers came when we recorded live John Lee Hooker on Maxwell Street, which is gone now. We had Pinetop Perkins, all these legendary people, recording John’s song “Boom Boom.” And when we ended up making a deal with Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun himself wouldn’t put John Lee Hooker on the album. He said, he’s too old, and too black. It was very gratifying when the album went platinum.

I pulled a bunch of my parent's vinyl from storage last week, and among the titles was Briefcase... Spun it earlier this evening, and enjoyed it a bit. Aside from a couple obvious numbers, they dug fairly deep for songs, made sure you knew who did most of 'em to begin with, give the band room to move, and emphasize the humor in Blues/Soul that gets too often forgotten by revivalists (although they do go overboard--some serious cocaine thought went into doing "Groove Me" in comedy Jamaican).

watched this movie with the kids last night and maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at how much they loved it. In a weird way, it's a perfect kids' movie, as long as you don't mind the swearing - the set-up is bare-bones simple, there's no extended dialogue or plot mechanics to decipher, tons of WB-cartoon style physical comedy, a great musical number every 5 minutes or so.

No thank you, ma'am. We may be suckin' back a few beers later on. We'll be here all night. You see, we're the band!

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0008/3453/5487/products/8488566437676557808_GRATEFUL_DEAD_NEW_YEARS_2048x.jpg?v=1537901528

I haven't seen this since I watched it many times as a kid, and my only memories are the country bar scene, Aretha singing "Think," and the car chase/crash, which was my favorite part of the whole thing.