Movie Review: The Blues Brothers (1980)

A bombastic musical comedy, The Blues Brothers is a raucous exercise in unconstrained charisma. The story of two hip brothers seeking to raise money for an orphanage is just a good excuse for automotive mayhem and buoyant musical performances.

Released from jail after serving three years for robbery, Jake Blues (John Belushi) is picked up by his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) driving a repurposed ex-police car. Together they visit an orphanage run by nuns, and discover that the institute will shut down unless a $5,000 tax bill owed to the City of Chicago is settled within days. Jake and Elwood decide that they are "on a mission from God" and set out to do the only thing they know how: reunite their old blues band and perform a show to raise the required money.

They track down their old bandmates, who are all initially skeptical but ultimately game. Along the way, Jake and Elwood manage to enrage the police and the local neo-Nazi chapter, while a mystery woman (Carrie Fisher) does all she can to blow the brothers to smithereens. Hotly chased by their pursuers, the reunited Blues Brothers bungle their way into a show at a rough country and western eatery before finally landing a gig at a lavish hotel to give themselves a chance at raising the funds in time.

The Blues Brothers is a celebration of excess. Perfectly mixing music and comedy, director John Landis packs in over-the-top auto chases filled with wild stunts and crashes involving a ridiculously large number of cars, along with several long, energetic music numbers. He also milks every drop of star John Belushi's stratospheric star power, and unapologetically delivers an over-budget 133 minute musical comedy about very little. It is all disproportionately larger than life, and it all works.

Inspired by Saturday Night Live sketches and capitalizing on Belushi's post-Animal House popularity, The Blues Brothers is more an attitude and a cultural landmark than a narrative-driven film. Co-written by Landis and Aykroyd, the film achieves a cool vibe, with the two lead protagonists quickly achieving cult likability by sticking to their principles and their dark suits, hats, and shades, achieving hyper self-awareness and simultaneously remaining oblivious to the carnage unfolding all around them.

The highlights are many. The performance at Bob's Country Bunker is the perfect irreverent set-up, a place where the blues band has to quickly pretend to love country music, and where chicken wire protects the band from beer bottles hurled at them to signify derision and appreciation. Carrie Fisher's mystery woman bursts into the movie at regular intervals with ever more destructive weaponry, harbouring all of hell's fury. James Brown, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin among others show up for extended and dynamic musical cameos, sparking career revivals. And Landis somehow makes it perfectly logical that by the end of the film, an army of law enforcement vehicles, a militant group of neo-Nazis, and the Good Ol' Boys country band and their RV are all in hot pursuit of the Blues Brothers.

Aykroyd and Belushi are as smooth as any film buddy couple can be, whether acing their cool test, escaping from hundreds of police cars or performing their unique music-and-dance routines. In addition to Fisher and John Candy, the supporting cast is peppered with blues performers thought to be well past their prime, until the film propelled them back into the limelight.

The Blues Brothers is a spectacular success, but with a dark cloud hovering on the horizon. Within two years of the film's release date, Belushi was dead from a drug overdose, and Landis was charged with manslaughter for the tragic deaths of Vic Morrow and two child actors on the set of The Twilight Zone, caused by pyrotechnics bringing down a helicopter. Every type of excess, as it turns out, has its limits.

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Movie Review: About Last Night... (1986)

A romantic drama, About Last Night... delves into the dynamics of the dating scene, and an intense modern relationship sparked by sex but threatened by lack of maturity. The film is a surprisingly raw and pleasurably painful exploration of the highs and lows of infatuation.

In Chicago, Danny (Rob Lowe) and Bernie (James Belushi) are best friends and co-workers at a restaurant supply business. They chase after women and sex for sport, but then Danny meets Debbie (Demi Moore), who works in marketing, and after terrific first date sex, they develop a serious and fierce physical attraction. Bernie and Debbie's roommate Joan (Elizabeth Perkins), a kindergarten teacher, are jealous of the rapidly building chemistry between Danny and Debbie, but they are helpless to stop it. Debbie quickly moves into Danny's apartment.

But then the realities of life start to intrude, as Danny brings his work pressures home with him, while Debbie is eager for the relationship to evolve from lust into love and a long term commitment. With Bernie and Joan doing little to help the lovers adapt to life as a couple, the burgeoning romance comes under stress, and neither Danny nor Debbie are well equipped to navigate the churning waters of togetherness.

[Debbie and Joan are watching from a distance as their friend Pat flirts with a group of guys at the bar:]
Joan: Oh god, Pat's going in for the kill. Oh my! That was a nice turn.
Debbie: With just a hint of giddiness.
Joan: Her big move should be coming up any moment. The combination hair flip with a giggle.
Debbie: There is a 3.2 level of difficulty here. Joan let's see if she can pull it off.
Joan: This is it... this is it... Oh Yes!
Debbie: Oh Yes! Yes! Oh Bravo! Bravo! 9.0!

Within the churn of an overheated dating carousel, Danny and Debbie find a lake of tranquility but go through their courtship backwards, starting with sex, then togetherness, and finally trying to get to know each other. It's a sequence that is bound to encounter plenty of bumps, and indeed About Last Night... is more about the troubles than the pleasures of a couple. Past relationships, work pressure, unhelpful best friends and unsynchronized expectations all crash into the apartment once Debbie moves in, and neither of them is prepared to answer the questions thrown by life onto committed couples.

[Joan is reading a story for her Kindergarten class]
Joan: 'And the Virgin Mary descended upon... '
Kid #1: What's a virgin?
Joan: A virgin is someone who's never had sex.
Kid #2: What's sex?
Joan: Sex is something men and women do to make a baby.
Kid #3: Are you a virgin?
Joan: No.
Kid #3: Do you have a baby?
Joan: No. People who don't want babies also have sex.
Kid #3: What for?
Joan: For about 10 or 15 minutes.

With a longish running length of close to two hours, About Last Night... takes its time in creating four interesting characters. Debbie and Danny are individually capable, physically attractive, sexually stunning, but potentially hopeless as a twosome. Bernie and Joan are much more prominent than the token friends often thrown into romantic movies. Here they play a continuous role and generate a source of disruptive tension, as they maintain the single, searching life while Debbie and Danny embark on a trial of what comes next. Director Edward Zwick patiently builds the central relationship over a period of one year, the changing seasons and succession of holidays marking milestones in a passion born in the spring and already floundering badly by winter.

Refreshingly raunchy in its depiction of sex between a couple who initially can't keep their hands off each other, the script by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue is always looking for the subtle differences between men and women, Debbie's quiet yearning for signs of long term commitment finally crashing against Danny's unexpurgated bachelor tendencies.

And while About Last Night... avoids all frat boy humour, there are plenty of clever touches and sharp commentary on everything from dating habits to the ups and down of friendships as represented by Bernie and Joan.

Bernie: You know something Joan, if you didn't have a pussy there'd be a bounty on your head.
Joan: And you are a schizophrenic, psychopathic, maladjusted social misfit who is clearly in the middle of a very deep homosexual panic.
Bernie: So you want to dance or what?

Both Rob Lowe and Demi Moore deliver exceptional performances, among the best of their respective careers. Lowe captures Danny as a young man swept off his feet but tortured by his inability to understand what comes after great sex. Torn between his old life as represented by Bernie and all the opportunity and mystery offered by a possible life partner, Lowe finds the vulnerability of a seemingly confident man suddenly confronting a load heavier than he can carry.

Even better is Moore, her performance as Debbie filled with determination clashing with disillusionment as the man of her dreams fails to live up to fairy tale expectations. Debbie is less a work in progress than Danny, and Moore conveys a woman buffeted by a near miss: the almost perfect man who may just glance off target.

Danny: I think I thought it was going to be different than it...
Debbie: Than what it was really like? Me, too. Maybe we were just - too naive.
Danny: Yeah, maybe. Maybe we knew too much.

Heartfelt and genuine, About Last Night... is about everything that happens after the magic of the first night meets the cold light of day.

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Movie Review: 1941 (1979)

An attempted war comedy, 1941 is a debacle of almost unimaginable proportions. Steven Spielberg momentarily loses his touch and presides over an obnoxious bomb.

It's December 1941, one week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Los Angeles, civilians and the military are both on the edge of disorganized hysteria, anticipating an attack on the west coast. Indeed, a Japanese submarine is prowling the waters off California, and sub commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune) wants to make a name for himself by bombing Hollywood.

The US military men stationed in the area include Major General Stilwell (Robert Stack), more interested in watching Dumbo than leading his men; the slightly crazed Captain "Wild" Bill Kelso (John Belushi), randomly flying his fighter plane over California seeking phantom enemies; tank commander Sergeant Frank Tree (Dan Aykroyd), who knows how to inspire with words but not with actions; Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson) who desperately wants to get Stilwell's assistant Donna (Nancy Allen) into an airplane to get her motor running; and the hot head Corporal Chuck Sitarski (Treat Williams), who is desperately vying with dance-loving waiter Wally Stephens (Bobby Di Cicco) for the attention of hostess Betty Douglas (Dianne Kay).

Spielberg's first and perhaps most serious major flop, 1941 is a thunderous failure, a remarkable calamity considering the talent on both sides of the camera and a budget of $32 million. There really is no plot to speak of. The screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale fails miserably to create any characters or events worth even remotely caring about. With astounding speed the film degenerates into an excuse for excess in search of broad slapstick-style jokes, with most of the attempted humour falling embarrassingly flat. The whole exercise takes on the unmistakable air of an unmitigated disaster.

The opening scene, a funny take on Spielberg's Jaws, deserves recognition as the only idea to hit the target in the entire two hour running length. Otherwise, long minutes that feel like hours pass by with no meaningful laughs, as an enormous amount of destruction is thrown at the screen to no effect. With a cast that also includes John Candy, Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, Ned Beatty, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee and Lionel Stander, 1941 achieves quantity over quality in all respects. Characters scream, over-act, fight, punch, riot, brawl, shoot, and frantically wave their arms in the air, all to no avail. The events on the screen bear no resemblance to rational film making, and a weird disconnect settles over the film. Someone actually thought that all this would be funny. Instead, it's just humiliating for all involved.

1941 features an orgy of wanton destruction, Spielberg mistaking a child's tendency to spectacularly annihilate stuff with good farce. Never has so much on-screen hardware been so spectacularly destroyed to so little effect.

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Movie Review: Animal House (1978)

The film that invented the modern teenage gross-out comedy, Animal House has a lot to answer for. It's a genre that refuses to die, despite running out of fresh ideas decades ago. Nevertheless, in 1978 Animal House struck a chord, created a superstar, generated enormous profits, and set a standard. Franchises like Porky's (starting in 1982) and American Pie (starting in 1999), and films from Revenge Of The Nerds (1984) to There's Something About Mary (1998), owe their existence to Animal House, as do numerous other less famous and fortunately less successful titles.

The film tracks the adventures of the Delta fraternity on the campus of Faber College in 1962. Larry (Tom Hulce) and Kent (Stephen Furst) are new students who join Delta, and are soon acquainted with the other members including the slob Bluto (John Belushi), the biker D-Day (Bruce McGill), the smooth Otter (Tim Matheson) and his friend Boon (Peter Riegert). The Deltas are hopeless when it comes to academics, so they spend their time holding parties, starting food fights, going on road trips, chasing girls, irritating the snobs at the Omega fraternity, smoking pot with the cool Professor Jennings (Donald Sutherland), and making life miserable for Dean Wormer (John Vernon). Wormer is doing all he can to have the lot of them expelled, and he eventually succeeds. In revenge, the Deltas wreck the College's homecoming parade.

Not that any of the plot elements really matter. Animal House is all about the colourful characters and the quick, funny scenes of juvenile antics. Belushi's Bluto has all the subtlety of a cartoon character (think a combination of Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil), but he is genuinely funny and creates many of the best moments in the movie. With a twitch of the eyebrow Belushi signals that something is happening in Bluto's dense brain, and many of his lines and scenes have become legendary:  "Holy Shit!" (repeated three times with increasing panic); "Toga! Toga!"; "...when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour..."; "when the going gets tough...(long pause to remember the rest of the phrase)...the tough get going!"; the exploding zit in the cafeteria; and his encounter with the guitar player are all classic comedy moments.

Supporting Belushi is a more than capable cast, with Sutherland and Vernon providing some weight, and Karen Allen (as Boon's girlfriend) making a memorable debut as seemingly the only person in the movie with a head screwed on straight. Tom Hulce went on to a distinguished acting career, while Kevin Bacon, who has a small role, achieved stardom.

Director John Landis does not try to keep a lid on the proceedings, allowing most of the scenes to go way beyond the edge of sanity and ludicrousness. Why crash into one car in the parking lot when there are five that can be smashed? Why have one topless girl in the window when six can be frolicking in a pillow fight? Why insult one ethnic group at the Omega recruitment gathering when three or four ethnicities - and a person with a disability - can be lined up on the couch? And why disrupt only the College parade when the whole town can be brought down?  Landis was not only directing Animal House he was inventing the DNA of an entire genre, where the motto can be summarized as "push to excess."

Animal House is funny, and compared to more modern examples of the gross-out comedy, surprisingly subdued. But other than its genre-creating legacy, it is mostly memorable for showcasing Belushi's comic talent, sadly lost to the movies just four years later.

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