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It has been eighteen years since Jake and Elwood Blues took the
stage and presented their comic style of blues. Now, Elwood has
been released from prison and with the losses of Jake and Curtis,
he must reform the Blues Brothers Band and add new members Mighty
Mack (John Goodman), Cab (Joe Mortan) and Buster (J. Evan Bonifant).
This new Blues Brothers Band soon takes to the road and creates
their own mayhem and music.
The Blues Brothers have their first gig as the Blues-Grass Brothers
Band. This is not unlike the first performance in the original
movie at Bob's Bunker. The gig goes well, but Cab is hot on their
trail. After one song, bad weather sets in and the entire Blues
Brothers Band escapes in the blues-mobile. The chase continues
for quite awhile until Elwood loses his pursuants.
After losing Cab and the rest of the Illinois state police, they
run out of gas. While walking to find gas, they stumble upon a
tent revival where the preacher is none other than Cleophus James
(James Brown). This revival is a turning point for the band. James
gives a fiery performance that is powerful enough to convert Cab
into a bonafide Blues Brother. Once again, the Blues Brothers
Band all pile into one car and escape. (If you look close enough
in the rear window, Willie is laying down in the car in front
of the window. It gives you an idea of how they all got in there.)
The Blues Brothers make their escape after a massive pileup of
police cars is made (the largest car crash ever-filmed).
The Blues Brothers 2000 is an entertaining movie. Its biggest
flaws is the lack of Belushi, which causes most of the focus to
be only on Dan Aykroyd. John Goodman does not add much comedic
relief and most of BB 2000 is a one-man show versus the two man
performance of the original. The only other major flaw is that
the movie follows the first one in an almost perfect pattern.
This causes a good lack of originality, and even though it may
have been planned, it gets repetitive quickly. Still, the movie
is entertaining and worth seeing. It does surpass the first one
musically. There are more songs performed and the music is much
more grand scale than the first. The Battle of the Bands is very
much worth seeing.
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
The video quality of this film is very good. No noticeable artifacts
were seen and the film seemed entirely devoid of any dirt, scratches
and even film grain. Universal's Collector's Editions have generally
been very good in video quality and this title does not disappoint.
The film is 16x9 anamorphic and the new master created for the
disc appears to have received great care in its preparation and
creations for the DVD transfer.
Chapter 23 of the film, The Bluegrass Brothers (Riders in the
Sky) is a great chapter to view for a testament to the quality
of the transfer. This scene is very dark. There's no breakup or
contrast problems in the film during this scene. Additionally,
a very large cloud is show on the screen at one point and is very
similar in composition to some of the slow fog scenes that generally
cause havoc among DVD players. The badges of the State Police
are very shiny and vibrant during these dark scenes.
Throughout the film there are many colorful scenes and the transfer
holds up very well with these scenes. The colors are very brilliant
and colorful to look at. The very next chapter takes place during
the tent revival meeting. This scene has many whites and bright
colors. Once again, the DVD is crystal clear with no color bleeding,
contrast problems or artifacts. The video transfer is top notch.
Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?
The video transfer of Blues Brothers 2000 is very good, but this
movie's strong suit is not in it's visuals, but in it's audio.
Blues Brothers 2000 is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 Surround.
The sound does not disappoint either. The 5.1 sound is wonderful.
The musical numbers show a great amount of depth in sound. The
bass is deep and well pronounced and the highs are clear and pleasing
to the ear. The sound quality for a movie like Blues Brothers
2000 is by far more important than the video presentation, and
Universal has hit a home run with the 5.1 soundtrack.
The Dolby Pro Logic downmix of Blues Brothers 2000 does not hold
up nearly as good as the Dolby Digital track. The sound is very
flat and lacking of both deep bass and clear high-notes. The imaging
provided by the Dolby Digital track puts in way in front of the
Pro Logic. Everything sounds as if it is coming from the center
channel with the Pro Logic track, and the front channels do not
present a large variance from the center. The surround channel
of the Pro Logic mix is good for Pro Logic, but the sound still
suffers when compared to the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. In all truthfulness,
the Pro Logic may not be as flat as it appears, perhaps the Dolby
Digital track is that good.
This could very well be the truth, but the stereo downmix falls
between the Pro Logic and the Dolby Digital in sound quality.
I found myself preferring the stereo sound more than then Pro
Logic sound. The volume levels of the stereo and Dolby Digital
are about twice that of the Pro Logic and the stereo track's imaging
is much better defined than the Pro Logic's sound, except for
the surround channel that stereo lacks.
This films strong points are all in it's music. The Dolby Digital
track delivers those strong points extremely well. The sound is
so good that you may find yourself inserting the disc and just
listening to the musical tracks in wonderful 5.1 channel sound.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
Blues Brothers 2000 is not the best of the Collector's Editions
when it comes to supplemental material. The largest and most valuable
piece of supplemental material is the 23-minute featurette The
Making of Blues Brothers 2000. Director John Landis was the
central figure of the documenary, but members of the Blues Brothers
Band, Dan Aykroyd, Producer Leslie Belzberg and many of the artists,
such as Travis Tritt gave time to the documentary. The great car
crash was talked about and some behind-the-scenes footage was
shown about how this stunt was done. I personally felt that a
half an hour could have been given to this stunt alone, but it
was nice seeing some of how it was done. Another major topic was
on the collection of artists and the magnitude of that "getting
together." The documentary was not bad, but was your usual cable-television
half-hour segment.
The theatrical trailer is presented in Dolby Digital Stereo
and is entertaining to watch. The other supplements were nice
to look at, but were not still-framed. You had to use the pause
button to stop a picture and study it. The DVD step buttons are
yet to be utilized as much as they should be. The production notes
and bios are standard fare but do present interesting information.
Also inlcuded are two still galleries with production photographs
and a promotional poster campaign archive, and the usual talent
bios and production notes.
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop
the disc in your PC?
No ROM extras are included.
Parting Thoughts
If you were a fan of the original film, you may enjoy this film,
and you will probably want to purchase the disc. If you are a
run of the mill movie buyer, rent it first. This is a pretty good
disc though the supplements are not as in-depth as they may first
appear. Let the buyer beware.
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