smrhyne

The movie follows the same plot as the original Blues Brothers, but I enjoyed the music in this movie more--especially the battle of the bands at the end. In this movie, as in the original, Aretha steals the show. I'm sure Aretha must be as sick of singing "Respect" as I am of hearing it, but she put her heart and soul into it and made it sound just as fresh as it did in 1967. My brother refuses to watch this movie, because he can't imagine John Goodman replacing John Belushi. I'm sure there are other people who feel the same way, but I say give it a chance. While Goodman is no Belushi, I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. Most sequels fall short of the originals. I think if people would judge this movie on its own merits and not compare it to the original, they would get more out of it.

Plot-wise, not much of a movie, but the musical numbers more than make up for it. I had never paid much attention to Beyonce' before seeing this film. Actually, she's a pretty decent singer. I especially enjoyed "Swing Low", the song that they sang at the prison. The O'Jays were excellent, as always, but surprisingly, my favorite number was the rap number with T-Bone. It's surprising because I'm not a rap fan at all. I have watched this movie several times, because I find the music to be so uplifting. The acting certainly wasn't Oscar-caliber, but remember, most of the people are singers, not actors. Keeping that in mind, they did their job well.

I have seen this movie a countless number of times and know the dialogue by heart. Each time I watch it, I say, "I'm not going to cry this time". Sometimes I almost make it, but then Mahalia Jackson starts to sing and I lose it. My children don't understand why Sarah Jane wanted to pass for white. I tried to explain to them that in that day and age, it was sometimes necessary. The beautiful Susan Kohner steals the film. It's a shame that she only made a handful of movies. To me the most heart-wrenching scene is where Annie visits Sarah Jane in her hotel room. She says' "I want to hold you my arms one more time. Just like you were my baby." I puddle up just writing about it.

In Lana Turner's biography, she writes about the making of this movie. It was made shortly after her daughter stabbed Lana's gangster boyfriend to death. She said that when you see her crying in the funeral scene, those tears were real. When Mahalia started to sing "Troubles of the World", all of her troubles started to come back to her and she got up and ran out of the church. They had to run after her and bring her back to complete the scene.