There isn't a moment of "The Blues Brothers" that wouldn't have been more enjoyable if it had been mounted on a simpler scale. This essentially modest movie is reported to have cost about $30 million, and what did all that money buy? Scores of car crashes. Too many extras. Overstaged dance numbers. And a hollowness that certainly didn't come cheap. A film that moved faster and called less attention to its indulgences might never convey, as "The Blues Brothers" does in all but its jolliest moments, such unqualified despair….

["The Blues Brothers" features] two very deadpan white men whose love of black culture forms the story's main, perhaps only thread. This aspect of the movie, potentially its most interesting and original aspect, goes largely neglected. Though the story leads Jake and Elwood Blues of Chicago to a number of wonderful soul or blues performers—among them Aretha Franklin, James...