Wired

It's like a deeply unsettling version of Scrooged, based upon the life of a real person. I can understand why his friends and family were outraged, however, to an interested bystander it emerges as an oddly fascinating - albeit imperfect - movie.

It's character assassination, which doesn't in itself mean this is a bad movie, just a distasteful one. I thought it was a really good film. Perhaps one that should never have been made, but maybe that's why it's so powerful.

Every film has an agenda, so this one is no different... but just because it stays fixated on one angle doesn't mean that there's no insight at all to be gained from it.

Before I watched this movie, this is what I knew of John Belushi:

He was a comic who got a gig on Saturday Night Live, was great friends with Dan Ayckroyd (who was on the show with him), they did "The Blues Brothers" on the show and in a movie (and he did other movies as well), he was married and he died from dope. Oh, and Bob Woodward wrote a bio on him.

That's exactly ALL this movie tells.

And HORRIBLY!!!

So, save yourself a few bucks at the video shop and RENT SOMETHING ELSE!!

It just doesn't succeed. I didn't hate the movie like some did, I simply felt it should have concentrated more on Belushi's life then the whole afterlife fantasy nonsense. It had good moments here and there, especially the scene where Belushi and his wife are on the beach and he tells her he loves her, and the scenes involving Cathy Smith(played riveting by Patti D'arbanville)who was the women who gave drugs to Belushi the night he died. As far as Michael Chiklis performance goes he does try valiantly but comes short with portraying the comic energy that made John Belushi such a special comedian. Lucinda Jenny however is good as Belushi's wife. I'm surprised no one ever metioned her performance. She is one one the film's few virtues. Overall, though it comes up short in showing the true Belushi and really you what the filmmakers were thinking.

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.

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.