Critical Reception
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 85% based on reviews from 45 critics. It won the Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing and Sound Effects, is 14th on Total Film magazine's "List of the 50 Greatest Comedy Films of All Time" and is number 69 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
The Blues Brothers has been criticized for its simplistic plot and being overly reliant on car chases. Among the reviewers at the time of the film's release who held that opinion was Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert praised it for its energetic musical numbers and said that the car chases were "incredible". In his review for The Washington Post, Gary Arnold criticized Landis engorging "the frail plot of The Blues Brothers with car chases and crack-ups, filmed with such avid, humorless starkness on the streets of Chicago that comic sensations are virtually obliterated". Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "The Blues Brothers is a demolition symphony that works with the cold efficiency of a Moog synthesizer gone sadistic".
Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the film for shortchanging viewers on more details about Jake and Elwood's affinity for African-American culture. She also took director Landis to task for "distracting editing", mentioning the Soul Food diner scene in which saxophonist Lou Marini's head is out of shot as he dances on the counter. In the documentary, Stories Behind the Making of The Blues Brothers, Landis acknowledges the criticism, and Marini recalls the dismay he felt at seeing the completed film.
On the 30th anniversary, L'Osservatore Romano, the "semi-official" newspaper of the Holy See, wrote that the film is filled with positive symbolism and moral references that can be related to Catholicism. They went further stating, The Blues Brothers "is a memorable film, and, judging by the facts, a Catholic one."
Read more about this topic: The Blues Brothers (film), Reception
Other articles related to "critical reception, reception, critical":
... Reception Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 85.47% Review scores Publication Score Electronic Gaming Monthly 8.5/10 Game Informer 6.5/10 GameSpot 8.9/10 IGN 10/10 Nintendo ...
... This extract from the South African author J ... M ...
... A few reviewers, however, praised it very highly ... William A ...
... The film was released to generally positive critical reception Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film "outrageously profane" and "wildly funny", noting ... The film had its fair share of critical detractors, without noting the conservative family groups offended by the film's humor ...
Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or critical:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable rôle with the promise of rewards—material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the Garden of Eden.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)