About.com Rating

"The Blues Brothers" is a 1980 comedy starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd that has become part of American pop culture consciousness. I think that's because Jake Blues (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd) are such memorable characters. Now "The Blues Brothers" is being released on DVD in a 25th Anniversary Edition, which I found very entertaining.

For me, it's the music that gives the movie its exuberance.


The Blues Brothers Band plays numbers that are enjoyable enough, but the best are performed by guest artists Cab Calloway, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker.

The film's plot is flimsy?the brothers' quest to raise $5,000 to save St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage (their "mission from God")?but the episodes that take place along the way sometimes have a quirky appeal. The brothers call upon a nun named Sister Mary Stigmata, see the light at an African-American Baptist church, hear Murph and the Magic Tones do an atrocious rendition of "Cuando, Cuando, Cuando" at a Holiday Inn, get entangled with Illinois neo-Nazis, go to the Soul Food Cafe in Chicago, and play a gig at Bob's Country Bunker in Kokomo. All this leads to the big show in a resort hotel at Lake Wazapamani. I found myself smiling and chuckling a lot as I watched. However, I wouldn't describe "The Blues Brothers" as laugh-out-loud funny.

The press release I received billed "The Blues Brothers" as an action comedy, and the movie does contain quite a bit of footage of car chases and crashes.

Actually, I sometimes found this tedious, particularly during the film's last half-hour. But I did think the sequence amusing where cars are driven through a shopping mall, leaving it totally trashed.

"The Blues Brothers" 25th Anniversary Edition DVD is a two-sided disc that contains two versions of the feature film. An Extended Version of the movie is on Side A, while Side B has the Theatrical Version. The Extended Version is 15 minutes longer than the Theatrical Version.

When I interviewed director John Landis, he told a fascinating story about the origins of the Extended Version and mentioned some of the differences between it and the Theatrical Version. You can read his remarks elsewhere on this site.

But I think the most interesting information that came out of my interview with Landis was that his initial cut of the film was considerably longer than even the Extended Version. In fact, his initial cut was so long he expected it would be shown with an intermission. However, he claims exhibitors balked at showing that cut, at least partly because of racial issues.

"The Blues Brothers" 25th Anniversary Edition DVD comes with a few bonus materials. One of these is a 56-minute 1998 making-of documentary that features interviews with Landis, Aykroyd, the Blues Brothers Band, and producer Robert K. Weiss. I believe this is the same making-of that was on an earlier DVD edition of "The Blues Brothers," but I had not watched it before and enjoyed it. It was interesting to learn how location scouts found an abandoned mall with about 130 stores which were then fixed up to look like they were still in business just so some of them could be wrecked. Landis says the security guards were stealing some of the millions of dollars in merchandise that was placed in the stores.

There are some new bonus materials on Side B of "The Blues Brothers" 25th Anniversary Edition DVD. One of these is "Going Rounds: A Day on the Blues Brothers Tour," seven minutes of footage from a 2005 concert given by the Blues Brothers Band in San Diego. Another new extra is "Transposing the Music," a 15-minute featurette about the Blues Brothers as a pop culture phenomenon. A third new bonus material is "Remembering John," a nine-minute featurette where people pay tribute to the memory of John Belushi, who died in 1982 at age 33 from an injection of cocaine and heroin. I found all three of these features mildly interesting, but note that their total running time is only about 31 minutes.

On the next page, I've listed all the details for the widescreen version of the "Blues Brothers" 25th Anniversary Edition DVD. There is also a full-screen DVD version which differs only in the aspect ratio of the feature film.