The Blues Brothers!  They’re on a mission from God.

Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) are two Chicago orphans who love the blues and committing crime.  After Jake is paroled from Joliet Prison, he’s picked up by Elwood in an old police car.  Elwood traded the original Bluesmobile for a microphone.  Jake understands, even if he still doesn’t like being seen in a police car.  When they  visit the orphanage where they were raised, Sister Mary Stigmata (Kathleen Freeman) beats them with a ruler and tells them that the orphanage is going to close if she can’t pay a $5,000 tax bill.  Jake and Elwood set out to reform their band, raise $5,000, and save the orphanage.  Jake and Elwood may be two career criminals who never take off their dark glasses but they’re on a mission from God.

Along the way to putting the band together and raising $5,000, Jake and Elwood meet characters played by everyone from James Brown to Ray Charles to Aretha Franklin.  You never know when a big production number might break out.  Jake and Elwood also step on a few toes.  Soon, the Blues Brothers being chased by the police, the national guard, Jake’s parole officer (John Candy), Charles Napier’s country-western band, and a group of Illinois Nazis (led by Henry Gibson).  There’s also a mysterious woman (Carrie Fisher) who wants to kill them.  She has an impressive array of weapons but terrible aim.

The Blues Brothers was the first comedy to be based on a Saturday Night Live bit.  Unlike most other SNL movies, The Blue Brothers develops its plot far beyond what was originally seen on television.  Jake and Elwood get a full backstory and they also get personalities that go beyond the black suits and the dark eyewear. The Blues Brothers features Belushi at his most energetic but it’s also one of the few films to actually know what to do with Dan Aykroyd’s eccentric screen presence.  If Belushi’s Jake is all about earthly pleasures, Aykroyd’s Elwood almost seems like a visitor for another world.  Aykroyd’s performance of the Rawhide theme song is one of the film’s highlight.

The Blues Brothers has its share of funny lines and its famous for the amount of pointless destruction that it manages to fit into its storyline (with the “unnecessary violence” being authorized by the Chicago police to stop the Blues Brothers) but it’s also as surprisingly sincere tribute to the blues.  It’s a movie that can balance Ray Charles shooting at a shoplifter and a massively destructive car chase in a suburban mall with Cab Calloway playfully performing Minnie the Moocher and Aretha Franklin bringing down the house (or diner, as the case may be).  The movie can feature both a jump over an open drawbridge and Steven Spielberg as the clerk at the tax office.  It’s one of the strangest comedies ever made and it features all the excesses that would bring an end to 70s Hollywood but when Jake and Elwood say they’re on a mission from God, you believe them.