02/06/98
MOVIE REVIEW: Blues Brothers 2000
'Blues Brothers 2000' is an out-of-this-world road trip

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, Joe Morton, J. Evan Bonifant, Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Murphy Dunne, Willie "Too Big" Hall, Lou "Blue Lou" Marini, Tom "Bones" Malone, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Alan "Mr. Fabulous" Rubin, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, B.B. King, Nia Peeples, Kathleen Freeman, Sam Moore, Wilson Pickett, Frank Oz, Eddie Floyd, Johnny Lang, Steve Lawrence. A Universal picture written by Aykroyd and John Landis, directed by Landis. Rated PG-13, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 123 minutes.

Eighteen years after they rocked the nation with foot-stomping music and an outrageous demolition derby plot in The Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis have done it again with the magical, toe-tapping Blues Brothers 2000.

John Belushi, the other part of the 1980 winning equation, is long gone. The film makes reference to that in a touching -- yet amusing -- opening sequence, as Aykroyd's deadpan Elwood gets out of prison after an 18-year stretch for automobile mayhem that nearly destroyed Chicago.

But although John Goodman is a blander but game replacement, there's also Joe Morton and 12-year-old J. Evan Bonifant who join them in black hats, white shirts, black suits and dark sunglasses. Bonifant plays an orphan in search of a role model who hitches up with Elwood when Elwood returns to his orphanage roots fresh from prison. Morton is Cabel Chamberlain, the soul brother Elwood never knew -- the love child of Elwood's mentor, and now an officer with the Illinois State Police.

How these four get together on the road -- and on the run from the police, because Elwood is unfortunately charged with kidnapping -- takes a lot of time to set up. A sequence in the orphanage, with a funny Kathleen Freeman as a stick-wielding mother superior, goes on too long and there are stretches when the story threatens to bog down and get in the way of the music, which is this movie's real saving grace.

Part of the plot involves a gang of Russian mobsters who blow up a strip club owned by one of Elwood's old band members, played by Willie "Too Big" Hall. (Yes, there is near nudity, though the film never goes "all the way" in that department.) Willie joins Elwood and his pals on the road in the regrouped Blues Brothers Band after his club is blasted to smithereens.

The Russians -- like the redneck militia commandos also encountered on the Blues Brothers' Wonderland road trip -- are a plot device that never quite catches fire. Are they supposed to be really dangerous or just silly? Once the film begins to concentrate on the music, one almost forgets about the Russians and the rednecks until they make their inevitable return at the end of the film, only to be dispensed with in a very magical and hilariously surprising way.

Magic and miracles play a big part in Blues Brothers 2000, taking it out of the real world and into the realm of fantasy. But these things are welcome surprises that lift the film's spirits. Morton's Cabel does get lifted spiritually -- and literally -- in the film's brightest and most miraculous moment, set during a hallelujah!-praise-the-Lord tent revival meeting led by James Brown as a merry preacher.

Once Cabel takes off heavenward, so does Blues Brothers 2000. Suddenly it bursts at the seams with great music -- played by the likes of Brown, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Wilson Pickett, Gary U.S. Bonds, Isaac Hayes, Paul Shaffer, Travis Tritt, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, even Steve Lawrence! Aretha Franklin and the Ridgeway Sisters make an earlier strong showing to belt out Respect, buoying the film momentarily at a point when it really needs it.

Eventually Blues Brothers 2000 really flies to fantasyland with a trip to a 130-year-old voodoo witch's moss-covered mansion in the Louisiana bayou, where anything proves to be possible. Briefly Elwood and Goodman's Mighty Mack McTeer are turned into green-faced zombies.

What began as another chase movie turns into something that's truly out of this world . . . and does it with a driving rhythm that's inescapable.