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The Blues Brothers (1980) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2025-09-21 12:00:05
Imported:
2026-08
Tags:

Content

Thanks so much to RegalEagle/Brad for the Reactr request! NOTE that I watched the Extended Edition (2h27m runtime) of this film because it was asked for in the request and I was able to watch that version.

This movie was a riot. 😅 Please forgive me for not recognizing some very famous artists haha. While I enjoy Blues music, I do not willingly listen to it very often so I'm largely unfamiliar with a lot of the artists (and especially how they look).

Looking forward to your comments! Please enjoy. [Direct link here.]

✦ KL

Files

The Blues Brothers (1980) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction

Comments

Chris Elkins

Bummer cant do watch along to one my fav movies due to no extended I can watch

Nathan Jasper

I can appreciate the movie for its music but I have no idea what the story is other than complete chaos 😆

Noah Hallman

Oh good, so excited that it's the extended. I was going to ask because that's the version I'm most familiar with.

Crimson Ace

My dad took me to see this in the theater. Years later, we were watching it on a VHS Rental, and he started pointing out all the cameos of people I'd know. From Pee-Wee Herman to Chaka Khan... to Steven Spielberg as the County Assessor... just amazing stuff. I've seen this film more times than I can count, and it gets better on every viewing. KL, there's so much incredible trivia from this film that it's almost impossible to pick out one or two pieces without calling them all out. I highly recommend reading thru IMDb Trivia for this. The only piece of trivia I'll call out is the little boy in Ray's Music Exchange. Ray shoots a warning shot and says, "It breaks my heart, a boy that young goin' bad." That actor is De'voreaux White, and he went on to play Argyle, the limo driver in Die Hard (1988). I always like to think that it was Ray who turned Argyle away from a life of crime and set him on a good path. lol

Tyler Foster

It's available to rent on most digital services, although it may be called "Unrated" on those.

SnabbKassa

People to spot in this movie, whom KL may or may not have spotted. Steven Spielberg Chaka Khan Grover (the muppet) and Grover's voice actor Ralph Foody

Onno Smits

Awesome! I'm looking forward to watching this with you tonight. I'm glad it's the extended version!

Onno Smits

If you want me to, I can probably upload a copy of the extended version and send you a link. Just like this comment so I get a notification reminder and I'll see what I can do.

Tyler Foster

As others have mentioned, Steven Spielberg plays the guy in the Cook County Assessor's office who is on lunch break at the end of the film. I am always surprised nobody doing reactions seems to recognize him, because he looks and sounds basically like he still does today. John Landis often has fellow directors make cameos in his movies. Given the age of the film, Paul Reubens' appearance as a waiter is probably not a cameo so much as the kind of part he was doing in 1980. Chicago, where the movie is set, was chosen because it has its own style of blues, but it is also home to the Groundlings comedy troupe, which has produced many famous movie and TV comedy stars such as Phil Hartman, Jennifer Coolidge, Lisa Kudrow, Will Ferrell, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Reubens, where he first created the Pee-Wee Herman character that made him famous. Obviously, many Groundlings members ended up on "SNL," so my guess is that he was cast because he was a member. Speaking of "SNL," in case you don't know, Belushi and Aykroyd first performed as the characters on that show in a sketch where they were dressed as bees. Subsequently, they recorded an album that became a huge hit, and even played some shows in character as the Blues Brothers. Ultimately, this led to the movie. Belushi would die only two years later from a drug overdose. Aykroyd had planned on starring with Belushi in Ghostbusters (then called Ghostsmashers and set decades in the future), but put it on hold afterward. Decades later, Aykroyd, Landis, and the band reunited for Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), which introduces new characters in Jake's absence. Sadly, it isn't very good. In any case, Blues Brothers is thus the first movie based on an "SNL" sketch. Aykroyd had never written a screenplay before when he began work on this. The general rule of thumb is that a page works out to a minute of screentime, so the average movie script would be around 120 pages. Aykroyd's final draft was 324 pages and featured backstories for every single member of the band. Landis set about refashioning it into something more appropriate. Realizing it was too long, Aykroyd had it delivered inside the cover of a phone book and credited it to "Script-a-Tron GL9000." Many of the real blues musicians in the movie, including James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, and Cab Calloway, would go onto cite the movie as helping to revive their careers for a new generation of music lovers. At the time the film was made, many of them had fallen out of fashion or on hard times, and their appearances here revitalized their careers. As I mentioned awhile ago, the original plan was to make a three-hour movie with an intermission. They found a middle-ground cut on a print and restored it but the negatives for these scenes and the other scenes that were cut did not survive, and I think the Extended Cut feels unbalanced simply because it seems like they restored whatever they found. Had the "roadshow" version actually been released, my guess is that some of the extensions here still would've been trimmed out when refining that version, but since that version was ultimately abandoned, the result is a movie with everything put back in just for curiosity's sake. I like some of the extensions, but on the whole I think the theatrical is the better version. One thing they cut out was the band performing a song from a war movie at Bob's Country Bunker. Because the music was recorded separately, the song survives even though the footage does not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CPXnur0vMs

HugoBoss435

I don’t think I had ever seen the unrated version until just now. Good thing it’s included in my copy of the film. I agree with the previous comment that the theatrical release flows better. Still an all time classic. Good time indeed.

Drowned In Gravy

Late to the party, but as an Illinois native, a friend of mine and I went as the Blues Brothers to a Halloween party several years back and absolutely slayed. Slew? Whatever the past tense is. Everyone got the joke and I (as Jake) did Gimme Some Lovin' for karaoke with my friend (as Elwood) miming harmonica. Hands down best Halloween I've had in a few years. Also they did a great job of putting together a band of legit professionals. They were cobbled together from the Stax Records backing band and the SNL house band, but they'd played with Booker T and the MGs and a number of big-name acts. Just so happened they were also hilarious. But these were legit musicians.

Drowned In Gravy

"I hate Illinois Nazis" has unfortunately been a common refrain for me for the last year and change. But I keep saying it, 'cause fuck 'em.