YMMV / The Blues Brothers

• Adaptation Displacement: Mentioning The Blues Brothers is more likely to get some people to think of the film than the Saturday Night Live skits it's based on.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Elwood Blues: a good man who occasionally gets in the way of the law but is willing to try so hard to save his orphanage... or a destructive psychopath who should spend the rest of his life in jail for reckless behavior, especially regarding his driving through the mall, which no doubt resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage as well as endangering the lives of everyone in the mall. Rule of Funny and/or Rule of Cool is the only reason Elwood gets away with the first. Plus, he's on a mission from God. Divine intervention, mofos!
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Assuming it was a really high-end microphone, Elwood's swapping the original Bluesmobile for one was not automatically a bad deal since microphones were expensive at the time.
• Angst? What Angst?: The film ends with the entire band in prison. No one seems to mind.
• Dead Horse Genre:
  • The brothers' booking agent Sline explains that rhythm and blues is past its prime and Disco is in vogue.
  • Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" was nearly a victim to this trope. When Calloway went in to record, he was under the impression that it was his recent disco version that Landis wanted, and was highly annoyed to find out they wanted him to sing it as he originally did. He presumably changed his mind when his performance of that song in the film made him a star again.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: A number of viewers interpret Elwood Blues as autistic. This interpretation mainly stems from his predilection for sunglasses and relatively tasteless foods (which parallel autistic hypersensitivity and, in the case of the former, avoidance of direct eye contact) and from his long, convoluted speeches (which resemble infodumping). The fact that Dan Aykroyd, who played Elwood and cowrote the script, is autistic further ties into this interpretation.
• Epic Riff: Frequently. The Peter Gunn Theme is almost as associated with the Blues Brothers as it is for the original TV show.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Jake and Elwood pay the taxes for the orphanage, but they wind up in jail and drag their innocent bandmates along with them.
• First Installment Wins: Depending on which "first" we're talking about.
  • If you're talking about the characters, that started on Saturday Night Live. In terms of movies, there's no competition between the 1980 classic and 2000.
  • It's also highly regarded as the singular best movie adapted from an SNL sketch, with only the first Wayne's World film being considered a suitable contender.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Elwood notably gets several elements of their performance wrong at Bob's Country Bunker (calling the Rawhide theme "an old Rowdy Yates tune").^note Rowdy Yates was a character on the show, not the songwriter of "Rawhide". Is this the creators not doing their research? Or is it meant to show that Elwood is out of his element at a country bar and is mostly bullshitting his way through the set? Or was Elwood getting it deliberately incorrect because they needed to get out of there?
  • Another bit of brilliance. That old beaten-up police car of theirs takes a lot more damage and punishment than any car ought to, and they are able to evade the Illinois Nazis, police, Jake's heavily-armed pissed off ex, etc. as well as being able to have multiple car chases with no casualties. But the car suffers Critical Existence Failure the instant the Blues Brothers park outside the office and are able to deliver the cash. They really were subject to divine intervention and the car falls apart because its mission to ferry the Brothers to the office was complete.
  • It is also easy to see divine intervention in another way: no innocent person is actually hurt or killed by the Blue Brothers and their high speech chases. The police chasing them are technically antagonists, but rightfully doing their jobs and arresting two felons. Hell, the parole officer genuinely likes the Blues Brothers and even lets them do a performance. The Good Old Boys chase after them, but they're right to be angry at the Blues Brothers for cheating them out of a gig. The only people who (presumably) get killed are the Illinois Nazis, and they were racist scumbags whom even the police didn't particularly care for.
• Genius Bonus: The Triple Rock Baptist Church has Hungarian roots. You can tell by the crooked cross on top of the steeple.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Illinois Nazis are introduced holding a rally because "they won their court case". While it's most likely a reference to this SCOTUS case that occurred a few years prior, it becomes more upsetting after the Supreme Court ruled that the Westboro Baptist Church's funeral pickets were protected under the First Amendment in 2011.
  • In the same scene, the brothers get past the rally and counter-protest by driving their car through the crowd. In August 2017, a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and injuring at least 19 others.
• He Really Can Act: Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, and Alan "Mr. Fabulous" Rubin all get extended scenes showcasing their comedy skills.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The brothers' agent tells them that blues is a Dead Horse Genre and they should switch their act to disco. Thirty years after the film's release, blues music is still going strong, while disco remains going through periods of Popularity Polynomial.
  • When the Brothers get into the phone booth together, Jake says he needs to make a phone call. Elwood responds with "Who ya gonna call?", a question made popular by a later film starring his actor.
  • The Illinois 3rd Congressional District (which has included part of Chicago since 1873) overwhelmingly votes Democratic, to the point that in 2018, no Republicans put themselves forward for the primary. This allowed a neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier named Arthur Jones to claim the Republican nomination unopposed, prompting many people to return the "I hate Illinois Nazis!" line to common use. He still got 25.9% of the vote.
• Ho Yay: As the Illinois Nazis plummet thousands of feet to their doom from an overpass, one says to the Gruppenfuhrer, "I've always loved you." The Gruppenfuhrer is not amused.
• Memetic Mutation: Turning Elwood's famous line "It's 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." into a Mad Libs Catchphrase, with varying distances, destinations, things you have a full stash of, things you have half a pack of, and clothes.
• One-Scene Wonder: Frank Oz as the prison guard, Kathleen Freeman as the Penguin, James Brown as the Preacher, Aretha Franklin as the diner owner, Ray Charles as the owner of Ray's, and Paul Reubens as the waiter at Chez Paul.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: There was a platformer for the Super NES. It has almost nothing to do with either the movies or the skit beyond the name, controls that are poor at best, downright painful at worst, and it isn't designed too well. Oh, and it was made by Titus Software, who also worked on the Super NES Porting Disaster of Prince of Persia 2, Carmageddon 64 (another Porting Disaster), Hercules: The Legendary Journeys for the Game Boy and, last but not least, Superman 64. Not much more needs to be said about this.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Paul Reubens ^note  later known for his work as Pee-Wee Herman is a waiter at the Chez Paul.
  • The would-be guitar thief Ray shoots at? Argyle from Die Hard.
  • James Avery is one of the dancers outside Ray's Music Exchange.
  • During the scene in the Triple Rock baptist Church, the camera lingers on a young woman in the choir, who is played by a young and uncredited Chaka Khan.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The Illinois Nazis and their court case refer to an actual case, that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, of neo-Nazis wanting to hold a march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, which had (and still has) a large Jewish population.
• Special Effects Failure: The Bluesmobile doing a backwards somersault over the Nazis' car looks about as realistic as a flying pig, especially since it would technically have to turn around in mid-air as well, but is hilarious all the same.
• Squick: The soiled prophylactic ^note  a used condom the corrections officer fishes out of Jake's belongings with a pen.
• Values Resonance: The hated Illinois Nazis became relevant again in the wake of the resurgence of far-right extremism in late 2010s, such as the riots in Charlottesville, VA in 2017.

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