My Holy Mission: "The Blues Brothers" (1980)

After playing hours and hours of Driver: San Francisco, I was in the mood to catch up on movies with classic car chases. To my surprise, "The Blues Brothers" came up. I had no idea the infamous "mall chase" was from this movie, but I had to see the movie that created such an amazing scene. But this movie isn't only just about the chase, at least I hope it isn't. Read what surprised me about this movie after the jump.

The story begins with Jake Blues (John Belushi) getting out of prison and returning to the nun that raised him and his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) up. After hearing some terrible news that the orphanage they grew up in is being bought out by the Chicago school board. The Blues brothers need to get $5000 to keep the orphanage. How will they manage to get all these funds? Simple, bring back the band, do a few gigs and get paid. To bad the police want them for their outstanding tickets, a mystery woman keeps trying to kill them both and a pissed off country band that wants them dead. And don't forget, this all needs to be done in 11 days. Talk about a tight deadline. 

The Blues brothers will put on a great show, even for a country bar.

As a comedy, I wasn't holding my breath laughing. The comedy was real silly, very SNL like. Basically a bunch of skits that were tied together with a half decent story. Though don't get me wrong, the silly humour was enough to squeeze a few laughs out of me. It truly is all the small things that made this film enjoyable. It is very 80's humour. Obviously both Belushi and Aykroyd stole the show with their antics. But John Candy being the sheriff in charge of arresting the blues brothers was a nice touch. And Carrie Fisher is the mysterious woman that is hunting down the Blues brothers, she'll do anything for them to be dead. Including firing a bazooka, assault rifle and a flame thrower. Just nuts.

Princess Leila Carrie Fisher puts on a great performance as a crazy lady.

But let me bring you to what surprised me the most. The music. I just loved it, most of it is blues music (duh). But there were a few soul and jazz songs mixed in. Even cameos from Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin and James Brown were awesome. My toe was tapping to each music scene and I was surprised how much I enjoyed every song. The songs got me bouncing around and the show the blues brothers would put on during their music acts was fabulous. I don't think I've enjoyed music from a movie quite like this.

Now the fun stuff, the car chases. The were a doosy, there were two main ones. The first one being the obvious mall chase scene. While not being my favourite it was very interesting. I mean, a bunch of 70's muscle cars fitting in a small mall, and running around smashing everything up was awesome. Even though it was a slow speed chase, it did not let down. But the best scene was the chase down the streets of Chicago. It was fast paced, exiting and thoroughly enjoyable. The best part was that it wasn't sped up like it usually is during 80's car chases. The chase hits a new high when a bunch of Nazi's chase down the Blues Brothers in an orange Gremlin. The chase ends with the famous Gremlin falling 50 feet from the air and into the ground. 

"Yeah, lots of space in this mall."

All in all, I enjoyed this movie a lot, more than I initial thought I was going to. The musical cameos were awesome to see, and this translated into amazing music. Again, I really can't say this enough, the music was phenomenal and really gets you grooving. The comedy was there, but it didn't shine all that much. And of course I loved the car chases, it wasn't not a let down at all. Now if you don't mind, I got a mission from God I need to finish.