The film was released on February 6, 1998, to mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. It grossed $32.1 million on a budget of $30 million. The film is dedicated to John Belushi, Cab Calloway and John Candy, cast members from the original film who had died prior to its production, in addition to Junior Wells, who died one month before it was released.
Plot
Elwood Blues is released from prison after serving eighteen years for the events of the previous film and is informed that his brother, "Joliet" Jake Blues, has died. He is picked up by Matara, a friend who works for his former drummer Willie Hall, who wants to help him get back on his feet.
Before meeting up with Willie, Elwood asks to be dropped off to see Mother Mary Stigmata who is now working at a hospital after the orphanage was closed. She informs him that Curtis has also died but fathered an illegitimate son named Cabel Chamberlain, who is an Illinois State Police commander, and introduces him to an orphan named Buster to suggest mentoring him.
Against Stigmata's advice, Elwood tracks Cabel down at his police headquarters to inform him of his real father and asks him to join The Blues Brothers Band, which he plans on reforming. Cabel, upset by the news and offended by the suggestion to join him after seeing Elwood's and Jake's criminal histories, throws him out of the building, where Buster steals his wallet; it contains enough money for Elwood to purchase a new Bluesmobile.
Elwood and Buster begin tracking down members of the former band to recruit them from their current jobs. Willie runs a strip club and joins after it is burned down by the Russian mafia because Elwood enlisted the help of Willie's barman, "Mighty" Mack McTeer, to try and convince them to leave the club alone, by getting two of the mobsters drunk and leaving them bound and gagged in an alley. Mack also joins the band as well along with a former member named Matt "Guitar" Murphy who joins again at the advice of his wife, with whom he now runs a Mercedes-Benz dealership. Three members work at a radio station and quickly agree to join, and finally, Murphy Dunne joins after his boss at a call center gives him permission.
The newly reformed band uses their old agent to book them a show. On the way to it, they are followed by Cabel and the Illinois state police, who are now looking for Elwood for stealing Cabel's wallet earlier, and believing that he has kidnapped Buster. While avoiding the police, Elwood interrupts a militia group meeting, unintentionally destroying their boat full of explosives they planned to use.
The band arrives at the show to find they have been mistakenly booked as a Bluegrass band, but perform anyway. Afterwards, they evade capture by the police, but they catch up with them at a tent revival where Reverend Cleophus James is preaching. Before Cabel can arrest them, he has an epiphany brought on by Reverend Cleophus that he should join the band instead of being a police officer. The band evades capture once more, now with Cabel joining them, who the police believe is brainwashed.
The band continues on to their next booking, an audition for a Battle of the Bands put on by Queen Mousette who Mack informs is allegedly a 130-year-old voodoo witch. Queen Mousette requests the band play something Caribbean; when Elwood explains they don't play Caribbean music, she casts a spell on them to play anyway. She accepts the band into the battle, however, Elwood, Mack, and Cabel are turned into statues.
At the show, Queen Mousette undoes the spell to allow the Blues Brothers to play against the Louisiana Gator Boys, a supergroup of blues musicians who win the battle. After the battle, the show is interrupted by the arrival of the Russian mafia and militia group from earlier; they are turned into rats by Queen Mousette. The Illinois state police arrive, but stand down after Cabel informs them that he is okay. Elwood suggests that the two bands jam together on stage. When Mother Mary Stigmata arrives, Elwood uses the performance as cover to say goodbye to Cabel and Mack and escape with Buster, with the police giving chase.
"We'd always intended for a sequel with John, but of course when he passed away, it was obvious we weren't going to do it. But Danny had been performing with John Goodman and Jimmy Belushi and the band, and he said, "You know, this is great, because this music is recognized now—let's do a movie." I said, "Great, sure, okay," and we wrote what I thought was a terrific script. Then Universal Studios eviscerated it. That was a strange experience, because the first thing they said was that it had to be PG, which meant they couldn't use profanity, which is basically cutting the Blues Brothers' nuts off. The first movie is an R-rated film, but there's no nudity or violence in it. It's just the language. Then they said, "You have to have a child, you have to have…" The bottom line was, the only way that movie was going to get made was to agree with everything they said. You know the difference between a brown-nose and a shithead? Depth perception. That's the only time I never really fought with the studio, because they didn't really want to make it. So we did every single thing they said. By the time we'd done that, the script was kind of homogenized and uninteresting. Danny said, "It's about the music. It's just about the music, John, so don't worry about it. We'll get the best people, and we'll make a great album, and get these people on film. We have to document these people." It's interesting, because, as much as I make fun of Danny, three or four of those guys have passed away since we made that movie. People say, "Okay, you've got Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, and John Lee Hooker in The Blues Brothers—who's in Blues Brothers 2000?" The answer? Everyone else. The first movie has five musical numbers, and the second movie has 18."[4]
The film made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest car pile-up, a record previously held by the original film. 63 cars were used in the scene after Elwood says to the band, "Don't look back." Inevitably, everyone looks back and sees the massive pile-up. Portions of this scene were filmed in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The film was originally intended to include Brother Zee Blues (Jim Belushi). But due to an already existing television deal (he had been cast in the ABC drama Total Security), he was unable to appear and the script was altered to include Cab Blues (Joe Morton). This character was named Cabel as an homage to Cab Calloway, who died four years prior to the film's release. (His character Curtis was revealed to have died in the film along with Jake.)
The Blues Brothers' original keyboardist, Paul Shaffer, had been committed to Gilda Radner's one-woman show on Broadway Gilda Live and was therefore unable to appear in the original film. He was replaced by actor-musician Murphy Dunne. Shaffer does appear in this one, taking a week off from Late Show with David Letterman to film his role as Queen Moussette's majordomo and emcee of the Battle of the Bands (Warren Zevon took his place that week on Letterman's show). Shaffer shaved his head for the role, a change in appearance he chose to retain permanently.
During the "Funky Nassau" number, Shaffer in his character of "Marco," asks to cut in on keyboards, which Murph allows. This marks the first time on-screen that the Blues Brothers Band played with their original keyboardist.
The film grossed a little over $14 million in box office sales in North America.[6]
Critical reception
The film received mixed reviews, averaging a 46% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews, and a critical consensus that reads, "Braving onward without the late John Belushi, Blues Brothers 2000 gets the band back together with a spirited soundtrack, but a mission that's far less divine".[7] It earned a D score from Entertainment Weekly.[8]Roger Ebert gave it 2 stars, saying, "The film is lame comedy surrounded by high-energy blues (and some pop, rock and country music)."[9]
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.[10]
Despite the poor reception. Aykroyd remained proud of the film. Saying in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone "the second movie’s a small-g good accompaniment to the first. Erykah Badu’s song was worth the price of admission. I’m glad we did that story, and I wish Jimmy [Belushi] had been in it, but everybody was good in it, and it was fun."[11]
A Blues Brothers 2000 video game was released for the Nintendo 64 on November 17, 2000, two years after the film's release. The plot involves Elwood as the main character going through different chapters and levels while trying to save the kidnapped members of the band one by one. Like the film on which it based and the video game based on the original film, it was poorly received.
In a 2023 Interview, Jim Belushi stated that Aykroyd had kept pitching him several ideas for a third film, such as a female-centric film where Elwood mentors a group called the Blues Sisters, and a film where Elwood finds Jake's long lost biological brother in Albania.[12]
