Wired

Someone once said that John Belushi was a combination of Lou Costello and Vlad the Impaler! He wanted to grab the whole world and snort it. This was Michael Chiklis's first big part (he's now the rogue cop on The Shield). He does a convincing job bringing Belushi to life in all his madness. They do a good recreation of him and Dan Aykroyd doing their Blues Brothers routine. Did Belushi have a sub-conscious death wish? It would seem he did. Like the phantom cabbie tells him "Life is not for everyone". The whole "angel" thing is original but it does make the movie confusing and hard to follow. Belushi wanted it all but it was too much. Like Elvis, Belushi was a case of too much and too fast.

Here is a movie that is utterly without redeeming qualities.

I was a Belushi fan, but I never shared the opinion that Woodward's book was a hatchet job...on the contrary, I though it was a pretty good piece of journalism.

This movie, however, is not at all faithful to the book. There is a bunch of "ghost of Christmas past" kind of stuff with the ghost of Belushi riding through his past with a Latino cab driver who identifies himself as Belushi's 'guardian angel'...where did this come from?

It's certainly not in the book.

Everyone involved seems embarrassed to be part of this mess, and so they should!

On a scale of 1 to 10 I give "Wired" a MINUS 20...utter and complete garbage...the final insult to a great performer.

This is one the worst pieces of garbage I have ever seen. Tasteless,vile and total piece of crap best describe this useless waste of time and effort.

The plot revolves around the lifestory of the late John Belushi. Belushi's corpse rises out a bodybag,eats a cheeseburger and is met by his guardian angel,together they walk through key events in his life.

The film goes downhill from there.

Belushi is portrayed as bullying slob of a junkie,the film is poorly cast and directed and the storyline is horrible.

Don't even waste your time renting it.

and I have seen a lot of films. I saw this in the theatre in 1989 and to this day I remember the sickening urge to walk out. If you like John Belushi, respect his talent, or even the sanctity of the cinema-- this film has nothing to offer you. It is mostly a pathetic showcase for the writer of Belushi's biography, Bob Woodward. As we see the progression of Belushi's life pass on the screen, Woodward actually shows up in the film like a ghost character. The most offensive scene occurs when Belushi is dying, looks up from his deathbed to see the author standing above him and he weakly utters "Breathe for me, Woodward." There are too many terrible things to mention them all, the least of which is the opening that has Belushi jumping out of his body bag in the morgue and getting into a taxi driven by a guy named "Angel." I'll leave it at that.

Imagine for a moment, you are Judy Belushi, a grieving widow with a funny name. Your husband is John Belushi, one of the most talented and beloved actors of the 1970s. He died tragically in a drug overdose in a seedy motel, a speedball of heroin and cocaine in his system. Leaving your grief-stricken and alone.

All of the sudden, you meet Bob Woodward, the world-famous reporter who broke the Watergate scandal. He tells you that he wants to write a biography about your husband, showing his grand life and his tragic downfall. You of course agree, reasoning that the world deserves to know your husband's whole story. The good and the bad.

But when the book comes out, something goes terribly wrong. There's a whole lot of the bad, but virtually none of the good. The happier moments in your husband's life are either glossed over or woven into moments of piggish selfishness, and the bad moments are focused on with a heavy-duty microscope, exaggerated tenfold or outright fabricated.

Now you know the story of "Wired." A bizarre and confusing chapter in the book of Woodward, the only book he ever wrote that wasn't about politics. And that would be an unfortunate and tasteless enough end to this story were it not for this movie's production.

A mere year after publishing his hatchet job, Woodward was trying to auction off the film rights to his book, but no one wanted anything to do with it. Woodward eventually secured a low-budget studio's cooperation and production on this cinematic abortion began.

Even the gullible fans of Bob Woodward's Wired don't enjoy this film. What could have been a straight-forward Bio-Pic about the troubled life and times of a famous actor turns into a bizarre Three Stooges-style farce. Apparently the filmmakers decided that what a hard-hitting biopic about the raise and fall of a real person needed was comedic fantasy sequences of John Belushi's ghost traveling around with a wise-cracking Hispanic taxi driving guardian angel literally named "Angel."

The movie is a confused mess of bad ideas, poor execution and bad storytelling as the narrative goes back-and-forth between hammed up, exaggerated dramatizations of situations that vaguely resemble things that really happened, low-budget reenactments of legally safe bootleg versions of SNL sketches, and the insufferable "It's a Wonderful Life" subplot. The "Angel" character is one of the most unlikable characters in the whole film, spending his time either being Scrappy Doo levels of annoying and cracking bad jokes, or going on morally righteous tangents about how John Belushi ruined his life with drugs and is a piece of crap who deserves to die. He really is the heart and soul of this movie. The black, withered, shrunken heart and soul.

Woodward claimed Hollywood didn't want this movie made because it contained "too much truth." An assertion that becomes absurd once you actually watch the film. Even ignoring all of the ridiculous fictional elements, the "Real life" elements are just as out-of- touch with reality. People who were enablers and willing participants in Belushi's drug use become dotting parents who lecture him on the dangers of drugs, incidents that were totally innocuous are rewritten as bombastic pivotal disasters, and major moments in Belushi's life are either glossed over in seconds or totally ignored.

But by far the most insane and bizarre thing about this movie, even more bizarre than the inclusion of Angel the magic cab-driver and Ghost Belushi, is the inclusion of Bob Woodward himself as a character. Woodward, who served as a consultant on the film, is inexplicably featured in the story as a heroic protagonist unraveling the mystery of Belushi's untimely death. Watching this film would give you the impression Woodward was a brave hero everyone loved and Belushi was a mean junkie who everyone hated.

But getting angry at this film is pretty pointless, since it was a massive commercial and critical bomb. It's highly anticipated premier at Cannes ended in boos and a disastrous press conference and it's controversy and dubious quality ensured it never got a full home video release.

So is there anything redeemable about this film? Well, Michael Chiklis is great as Belushi. He looks like him, sounds like him and captures his attitude and behavior perfectly. Too bad this movie nearly ruined his career. At least him and Jim Belushi tearfully reconciled years later. Can Chiklis really be blamed for taking this part? This was his first real movie ever.

The story of Wired is far more interesting than Wired's story.This film is an interesting piece of film making history and an intriguing chapter in the life and times of Bob Woodward. But as an actual film? It's a real stinker. Don't even bother with it.