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The Blues Brothers (1980)

Started by DrGreggles, January 05, 2019, 11:14:51 PM

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DrGreggles

Just been watching this for the first time in bloody years.
Loved it when I was a kid.

Take the music away and it's fucking dreadful isn't it.
Not a laugh to be had.

Replies From View


Avril Lavigne

Wrong DrGreggles, it's got plenty of great super-dry humour throughout and if that's not your thing there's all sorts of physical comedy going on too. Also Carrie Fisher's character is much cooler than Princess Leia.

Lordofthefiles

Paper thin script notwithstanding, John Belushi just seems like a narcissistic boor in everything I've ever seen him in.
Like he can't act and no one is willing to tell him!

...and I'm only going easy on Dan Ackroyd because the Fred Garvin - Male Prostitute SNL sketches make me chuckle.

the

Somebody showed it to me a few years ago in an attempt to impart its brilliance to me. I found it pointless.

Apart from the music, the comedy seems to be reliant on this hum of 'coolness' running throughout that just feels like a load of nothing. Found it flabby and overlong too.

And that bit where the car turns around in mid air. So over an hour in and I'm watching a cartoon now am I? Nah, didn't like it.

Blumf

Just found out that the kid trying to steal the guitar in Ray's shop is the chauffeur in Die Hard

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Oh cheer up, you massive bunch of miserable cunts. The Blues Brothers is a hoot.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on January 06, 2019, 12:00:04 AM
Oh cheer up, you massive bunch of miserable cunts.

Or (try to) watch Dan Aykroyd's Nothing But Trouble and see what his genuinely bad passion-projects were like.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

To blazes with the naysayers! It's one of my all time favourites. Aside from it being very funny indeed, the car chases are quite possibly the greatest ever captured on film.

I don't much care to hear Everybody Needs Somebody again though. One to many wedding reception bands have turned it into a cringe worthy cliché. That and Mustang Sally.

Quote from: the on January 05, 2019, 11:37:37 PM
And that bit where the car turns around in mid air. So over an hour in and I'm watching a cartoon now am I?
It was a cartoon the whole way though. Carrie Fisher repeatedly tries to blow up Jake and Elwood and they walk away without a scratch each time.

Thursday

They're no Mitchum Brothers are they? John just didn't have the talent of his brother.

Enzo


Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: the on January 05, 2019, 11:37:37 PM
And that bit where the car turns around in mid air. So over an hour in and I'm watching a cartoon now am I? Nah, didn't like it.

How could you not pick up on the fact, within the first ten minutes, that the entire film is an absurd, deadpan, live-action cartoon?

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: DrGreggles on January 05, 2019, 11:14:51 PM
Just been watching this for the first time in bloody years.
Loved it when I was a kid.

Take the music away and it's fucking dreadful isn't it.
Not a laugh to be had.

Take the music away and it would be about ten minutes long.

bgmnts

Never understood why it's meant to be so funny. I love the musical numbers though.

Dan Aykroyd's best performance will always be Joe Friday in Dragnet. No contest. I quite like him in Blues Brothers though.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on January 06, 2019, 01:24:17 AM
Take the music away and it would be about ten minutes long.

It would be at least an hour long. Take away the music, and it's two deadpan comedy characters navigating various OTT car chases while dealing with nazis, cops, redneck country bands and Carrie Fisher with a bazooka.

Also, John Candy's performance as an inexplicably cheerful policeman is wonderful.

Sebastian Cobb


Lisa Jesusandmarychain


kalowski

If I'm in the pub with two other mates and I'm going to the bar I regularly say, "Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips."

Endicott


the

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on January 06, 2019, 01:22:07 AMHow could you not pick up on the fact, within the first ten minutes, that the entire film is an absurd, deadpan, live-action cartoon?

Because cartoons have actual jokes.

Snark aside, I suppose my main difficulty with it is that I've never liked that way of fossilising a stylised 'musical cool', that codified School Of Rock way of saying 'this is the genre, these are landmarks, they are classic and unassailable, learn the tics'. Middle aged dads wearing shades, kids doing exaggerated metal horns and saying 'rawk', cheap scribbles of a much more complicated meaningful thing.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: the on January 06, 2019, 10:39:14 AM
Because cartoons have actual jokes.

Snark aside, I suppose my main difficulty with it is that I've never liked that way of fossilising a stylised 'musical cool', that codified School Of Rock way of saying 'this is the genre, these are landmarks, they are classic and unassailable, learn the tics'. Middle aged dads wearing shades, kids doing exaggerated metal horns and saying 'rawk', cheap scribbles of a much more complicated meaningful thing.
I know a lot of people have this issue with the film, how it set up some kind of shorthand that "James Brown and Aretha = soul/passion/meaning", the sort of thing that got Green Gartside and various journalists all excited.

Thankfully, the first time I saw it, I was about ten years old and had no idea of any of that, or who any of the people in the film were. I didn't recognise that the dude from Ghostbusters was in it. But I loved the car chases, the scary nun and the silly things like the phone box flying a hundred feet in the air but the brothers just clamber out after filling their pockets full of change.

I still watch it about once a year, still chuckle. And I do think that they had their hearts in the right places by putting a lot of old musicians in it, regardless of how it was taken on.

Sebastian Cobb

Some of you cunts are impossible to please.

That said, The Commitments is the thinking man's version.

kalowski

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on January 06, 2019, 11:07:27 AM
I know a lot of people have this issue with the film, how it set up some kind of shorthand that "James Brown and Aretha = soul/passion/meaning", the sort of thing that got Green Gartside and various journalists all excited.

Aretha, JB and especially Brother Ray are magnificent in it, of course. Cab Calloway none too shabby either.

I too was watching it last night. Still fucking love it.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: kalowski on January 06, 2019, 11:30:32 AM
Aretha, JB and especially Brother Ray are magnificent in it, of course. Cab Calloway none too shabby either.
Aretha Franklin swearing is funny. It just is.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on January 06, 2019, 01:34:37 AM
It would be at least an hour long. Take away the music, and it's two deadpan comedy characters navigating various OTT car chases while dealing with nazis, cops, redneck country bands and Carrie Fisher with a bazooka.

Also, John Candy's performance as an inexplicably cheerful policeman is wonderful.

Don't get me wrong, The Blues Brothers was one of my favourite movies. Saw it at the cinema with me mates and I don't think we stopped talking about it for months. I haven't seen it in an age because I'm nervous it won't match up to my fond memories (even though I watched the battered VHS tape many times in the mid-eighties). It also got me into soul music, as National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) piqued my interest with Otis Day & The Knights. The funny thing today, is that I would probably enjoy the music of Murph & The Magictones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pxDtai-sEM


EOLAN

While the main focus is on obviously blues music, my favorite part is definitely the country bar section. When it came out on Netflix and was just looking for something short to watch I just went to that section. Also felt it was the part where Belushi looked coolest.

Overall decent film.

Shit Good Nose

It's a classic.  One of my favourite comedy films and one of the very very few musicals I like (although you could easily argue that it's not really a musical).

More controversial than the above is that I genuinely quite like BB 2000.  Nowhere near in the same league of course, but I've always had a non-ironic soft spot for it.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: EOLAN on January 06, 2019, 12:29:41 PM
While the main focus is on obviously blues music, my favorite part is definitely the country bar section.
Country AND Western.

madhair60