Artist The Blues Brothers

The various horrors of A Night At The Roxbury and Coneheads might’ve been avoided if 1980’s The Blues Brothers hadn’t converted the barest of Saturday Night Live premises—two besuited, sunglass-wearing white boys with an alarming amount of soul—into one of the decade’s finest screen comedies. But it did, and the madcap road movie with a killer soundtrack endures, transcending even its own atrocious sequel, Blues Brothers 2000. Charged with a “mission from God,” Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s titular brothers seek to put their old band back together, torpedoing through chaotic, John Landis-helmed set-pieces involving rowdy rednecks, vengeful neo-Nazis, a sharp-shooting Ray Charles, and a jukebox’s worth of other R&B legends. 

Updated 01/12/2011