The team of Dan Aykroyd and John Landis has scored one more time for posterity with the long-awaited sequel to the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers.

The film begins with the quiet trademark of the original; a mere nod to John Belushi, John Candy and Cab Calloway. Calloway's performance in the original film sealed forever the Legend of this dynamic performer whose get-down Cotton Club style spawned so many mimickers.

The movie's opening shot is a near Xerox of the original. Suddenly it's 18 years later and Elwood Blues is just getting out of prison after serving his time for 762 counts of reckless endangerment highlighted in the first movie.

Poor Elwood stands outside the front gate for two days waiting for Jake to pick him up. Nobody's told him Jake's dead. Finally after watching Elwood lean to one side from the wind of a passing truck, the prison warden, In & Out director Frank Oz (who played the prison property officer in the first movie) tells Elwood the somber news about his brother. Slam into first gear.

Elwood decides to back-track his life and goes to visit the penguin, that scary Nun from the first flick. There he finds that the orphanage he tried so hard to save in the first movie has been torn down, Sister Mary has become a Mother Superior and Curtis (Cab Calloway) has also passed into the great harmonica rift in the sky.

Mother Superior gets to whack the black out of Elwood's suit once again and she gives him a task and a treat.

First, he must be a big brother to an orphan, Buster (Jevan Bonifant) which Elwood wants no part of at first. He also finds that Curtis left behind him an illegitimate son, Cable, who's now a Commander in the Illinois State Highway Patrol (Oh No!).

Elwood feels obliged to let Cable know that his momma had harbored tastes for treats other than lemonade while her husband had been doing his Air Force Colonel thing. Cable's real father? A lowly blues musician.

Joe Morton evokes pure wonder in the part of Cable Chamberlain (Cab Chamberlain—Cab Calloway…Get it?), singing with more heart than one might previously have guessed possible.

Cab's stern Highway Patrol uniform turns suddenly into (guess?) a black suit, pork-pie hat and dark sunglasses! In mid-air!

Through the movie we get reacquainted with old friends from "da band, Elwood! Da band!" Aretha Franklin once again appears as Matt "Guitar" Murphy's wife but this time we're treated to a little dose of Respect to go with Think-ing about it.

John Goodman is a newcomer to this saga and his explosive blues style more than makes up for John Belushi's absence. He even makes Belushi's character seem laconic by comparison. Goodman's Mighty Mac works well in spite of few style differences between Goodman's usual affluent presence and Aykroyd's laid-back recidivist personae.

The real treasure in this film is Jevan Bonifant's character of Buster Blues, the next generation of blues-loving men. This young person's talent is astounding! He can act, he can sing, he can dance flawlessly to some steps that would wipe out a hail-Mary chorus-line! He can even play harmonica and look indignant when Elwood outdoes him at the microphone. Move over Leonardo, Jevan is bogeying through!

It's not all blues in "Blues Brothers 2000," as Joe Morton (right) shows, it's sometimes a drag.

Now the treat that will make all good blues fans think they already are in heaven is the dream-band jam session at the end of the flick. B.B. King, Bo Didley, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Lou Rawls, even Travis Tritt! Playing the sweetest blues ever laid down to digital tracks. All the somebody's who've ever been anybody in blues are on that screen.

Of course the police still want to throw Elwood under the jail, but Elwood has bonded with little Buster and the two escape, bittersweet, in a new beat-up cop car with half the law enforcement community in the world behind them, with a promise to Cab and Mac that they'll meet down the road. The new hobo legend is born.

Don't touch that remote!!! Keep watching at the end of the credits for James Brown's performance of his trademark, Please, Please, with John Goodman holding the robe and ad libbing so that even the stern-faced Brown cracks up!

We'll meet down the road, indeed! The performances in Blues Brothers 2000 out-do the original film's although there are mountain-sized holes in the current script. But then again, it's worth it to sit beside Belushi, Candy, and Calloway in blues heaven, at least metaphorically. Yup, thumb's up.