Blues Brothers 2000 * (1998, Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, Joe Morton, Nia Peoples, Kathleen Freeman, Frank Oz) – Classic Movie Review 8240

Director John Landis’s 1998 Blues Brothers 2000 is a truly awful, misbegotten, forlorn sequel to the 1980 hit The Blues Brothers, in which Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) is freed from jail and reassembles the old band without his brother Jake but with John Goodman, as Mighty Mack McTeer, and a sassy orphan kid called Buster (J Evan Bonifant) instead.

Mother Mary Stigmata (Kathleen Freeman) has enlisted Elwood to raise funds for a children’s hospital. The band hit the road, but they are pursued by cops who, understandably, do not want them to play, as well as by the Russian Mafia and a militia group.

With John Belushi who played Jake Blues in The Blues Brothers long dead, it is just not the same, and Aykroyd should have known better, though the desperate Dan tries very hard to please. The ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ concert sequence is the only highlight, and it is not a blues song anyway, and nor is Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ which is the only other decent moment in the movie. Goodman and Bonifant are pretty good though.

A real washout, enough to give you the blues, Blues Brothers 2000 emptied the preview theatre impressively at the press show, with only half the audience staying for its over-extended running time of 123 minutes. It cost $28,000,000 and flopped at the box office.

Blues Brothers 2000 is a sad, sorry affair.

Also in the cast are Joe Morton, Nia Peoples, Frank Oz, Steve Lawrence, Darryl Hammond, Erykah Badu, B B King, James Brown, Junior Wells, Isaac Hayes, Eric Clapton, Dr John and Billy Preston.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8240

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