Film

The Blues Brothers

Name: The Blues Brothers
Genre: Music, Comedy, Crime
Released: 1980
Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles

John Landis's 1980 crime comedy is really a soul revue wearing a heist plot as disguise — Jake and Elwood wreck roughly a hundred cars and flatten a mall while reassembling their old band. Deadpan and joyous, it's startlingly generous with its musical numbers, letting Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Ray Charles each get a full showcase. For anyone who wants car chases set to a killer horn section.

TMDb rating

7.7

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Aykroyd again playing deadpan straight man to total chaos, only now it's ghosts instead of a Cadillac — the same dry comic engine wearing a completely different genre's clothes.

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Same underlying shape — outsiders racing across a city while every faction in it wants them stopped — stripped of the jokes and the horn section and played entirely for stakes.

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