Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

 

Yeah, so this one was pretty much doomed from the start. 

I mean: it's never easy to follow up something fresh and fun with a wacky phormula. You can either do something totally different and maybe alienate fans, or just rehash the original, thus ensuring that most people will automatically return to what made the first one so much fun to begin with. The latter is alas what they chose to do here, and this leads to a film that pales in comparison with the first one, for several reasons. 

After roughly 18 years, Elwood gets released from prison. However, there is no one to pick him up, as no one told him that both Jake and Curtis had died in the meantime.

Wow. Nice way to acknowledge that John Belushi and Cab Calloway had passed away there. 

Elwood returns to the orphanage (which is now a hospital) and is ordered to take on a kid called Buster as his ward. Why? Well, so Elwood would perhaps learn some responsability. But of course you know this will fail in the first ten minutes (which it does). 

Also: why suddenly include a 10-year-old? He is no blood relation, he doesn't help the story, he's just there. Sheesh.

Elwood gets a job in drummer Willie's stripclub where he discovers that the bartender Mack can really sing, and so he wants to bring the band back together. Yes, that schtick again. It works, and while driving towards a 'Battle of the Bands' in Louisiana, they piss off Russian mobsters, white power nutcases and once again get the entire police force behind them. 

Ah, and Elwood has a brother of sorts: an illegitimate son of Curtis, who is now head of the Illinois Police. 

Yes, this film is an absolute mess. The story is way too much of a retread of the first one, minus the lovable John Belushi, because he of course passed away. But this one just isn't fun. Heck, most of the time, it is pretty fudging boring, which should never be something you have to utter in a Blues Brothers-related fashion. 

You know what still is fantastic? The music. This time, there are more songs played out in their entirety, and with a truckload of huge stars. Heck, there are so many, it's almost insane. Special shoutout to the song with Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding, which has an extremely fun choreography; and the finale at voodoo witch Queen Moussette. She's constantly called old, hideous and evil, but as soon as you see the absolutely gorgeous Erykah Badu, you know they were trying to mess with you. 

Anyway: watch for the music, ignore the rest. Or even better: just get the soundtrack and skip the snoozefest of a film that tries way too hard to be like the wonderful first one.