cripper's Full Review: Saturday Night Live - Best of John Belushi
This was my first taste of Saturday Night Live and John Belushi, and I have to say this is one of the funniest videos I have ever seen! It is funny all the way through, and I can never watch this video without laughing once.
Anyway, I will start by saying what was in the video chronologically. First we have The Blues Brothers doing their version of Soul Man, which is introduced by Garrett Morris who says all this gibberish until he finally says:
Put your hands together! I said put your hands together! For the best of Joilet Jake and Elwood Blues! The Blues Brothers!
Well, that's my guess at what he says (he still says it too quickly for me to understand). Anyway, its always funny to see The Blues Brothers (Belushi and Dan Ackroyd) dance, and the music is also enjoyable to listen to. This is a classic Blues Brothers clip.
Next up is Samurai Futaba running his Samurai Delicatessen. This is EXTREMELY funny, particularly when he decides to split a loaf of bread in half by slamming it against his head. It is also made all the more funnier when Buck Henry says:
Can you cut out the fat (from the sandwich)? I distinctly said no fat. Remember?
After hearing this, Futaba takes this personally and starts sticking a knife into his stomach, before Henry says that its nothing personal. This great clip ends when Henry has to pay for his sandwich:
Do you think you can break a 20?
Hearing this, Belushi cuts the $20 bill in half, and since it was on the table, he splits the table in half too.
The first of 3 Beethoven (of course played by Belushi) clips come up in this next section of the video. His wife (Gilda Radner) is worried because he's not eating. So she shouts in his ear, and of course we know Beethoven's deaf. Then she hits Belushi, and Belushi says this:
Good morning! Nice to see you!
His wife then leaves the room, and pretty soon, you got Beethoven playing Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Big Oak Treeon the piano. His facial expressions are always funny to watch in his Beethoven clips.
Celebrity Corner with Bill Murray is also funny to watch. In this skit, we see Belushi as Elizabeth Taylor, while Murray talks to him(her). Taylor is seen here on a strict diet ("nothing but chicken"), so she can get back to her Butterfly 8 weight of 120 lbs. from a current 167 lbs. However, the diet is interrupted by Bill Murray when he says:
I hope your cheeks don't blow up over your beautiful violet eyes, which I have been in love with since National Velvet.
As a result, Belushi starts choking on the chicken, while Murray babbles on about Cleopatra 2. When he finally saying goodbye, Belushi doing a Heimlich (can't spell) Maneouver on herself. Murray finishes by telling everyone that she looks great! Absolutely hilarious skit to watch.
We move onto The King Bee Song. This is basically The Blues Brothers playing in bee costumes. This shows Belushi doing all kinds of acrobatic moves, which make you laugh. He ends the song with a few stutters that will make you laugh out loud. Its better to actually watch this one since most of the comedy is seen through the actions of Belushi.
The Therapy Session will always be one of my favorite SNL skits of all time (its a pity it wasn't on the 25 Years Of Laughs DVD. Belushi imitates Marlon Brando (the character Veto from The Godfather) and the impersonation of Brando is perfect. Throughout this skit, Belushi rambles and rambles on about the funniest things when he's supposed to talk about the Tattaglia family. After mentioning the Tattaglia family a few times, he starts talking about drugs then he starts talking about the ASPCA after him about "some horse thing". The ending is SOOOOOOO funny, but I won't spoil it. I'll let you see instead.
We see Beethoven again in the next skit. This time, we see more food on the piano, which shows that he's not been "eating for days". The wife still tries to shout in his ear, and after she hits him in the head, Belushi says this again:
Good morning! Nice to see you!
The wife then leaves. After a while, Beethoven starts playing My Girl on the piano, and soon even starts singing it! Always hilarious to watch!
Little Chocolate Donuts: The Donuts of Champions is an extremely funny clip! In this clip, we see that these donuts help Belushi break world records We see him high jump 7 feet, then we see him running some race and breaking the world record of this race too. He admits he "downed a lot of donuts". One of the funniest SNL "commercial" to watch.
The Blues Brothers come back again to do B-Boxcar Movie Blues. This is not intended to be funny, but instead is intended to be listened to. This is actually quite a nice song, with the brass section presence felt throughout the song, along with some nice counter melodies between the two guitarists. A very good song, which is performed well by Joilet Jake and Elwood.
Olympia Restaurant is really funny! This is basically a restaurant run by Pete(Belushi), his brother and 3 cousins (Dan Ackroyd, Laraine Newman and Bill Murray). They claim to only sell "Cheeborgers", "Petsi" and "Cheeps" (cheeseburgers, Pepsi and Chips). This is until the end when they make life difficult for a guy who wants eggs. I'd highly recommend anyone to watch this, since this is such a funny skit.
Next up, we have The Thing That Wouldn't Leave. This is basically about a bum (Belushi), who is in his friends' house (Jane Curtin and Bill Murray). The friends find it hard to get him out. At the end, the bum finds a good movie and tells his friends that he's going to call some friends over, and the skit ends when the bum says he's making a long distance call. This is actually one of the less funnier skits in the whole video. Nevertheless, this is still funny.
We move onto a Weekend Update skit where Belushi talks about the Luck of the Irish. First he talks about the various "good" phrases the Irish says on St. Patrick's Day, some of these include:
Whiskey for the leprachaun!
I would like to smash your head over with my shalaylee!
After talking about the "good" things about the Irish, he moves onto the "bad" things. First he says, Potato Famine! After saying how the Irish moved to the U.S. to get job opportunities, he goes on about some drunk Irish guy named Dan Sullivan. Belushi says, After two drinks, he'd look like an Irish pirate. After saying that, Belushi starts rambling insanely about this Sullivan guy. He talks about how he loses his car and how he had no insurance and how he gets locked up for being drunk, calling this "dumb luck". Then Sullivan's mother dies and while travelling, Sullivan gets arrested for trafficking. Sullivan calls Belushi and this is what Belushi says:
First off he's a drunk, now he's a junkie, what can be worse?!?! Don't ask me! Ask Sullivan! And what happens?! He calls me up and he says, "Hey man, I need 5 grand bail man". I said, I said, 5 grand man??!?! I said, hey man I've never even seen $5000 in my life! So don't ask me for it, why don't you go ask your mother! Which was a dumb thing for me to say, cause his mother's just died. I got this drunken Irish junkie who wants to kill me, because of what I said about his mother being in "terminal dreamland"!
Belushi goes insane and falls off his desk, which ends the skit. One of the best skits (certainly one of the best Weekend Update skits!) of SNL ever!
We see Beethoven again, and this time, his piano is full of trays of food. His wife (I think you'd already know who the wife and Beethoven are) is extremely worried, and she does the same thing again, and Beethoven says the same thing, however, this time the wife says:
Call if you need me!
Soon after that, Beethoven starts playing Ray Charles, Tell Me What I'd Say, and while singing the song with sunglasses, his wife comes in thinking he's calling her. Then he says, I said hey!, the wife says, "hey??!", then it moves onto "oh!". This is repeated a few times, until they are harmonizing. The best of the Beethoven skits.
Belushi's imitation of Joe Cocker will create non-stop laughter. His imitation makes you wonder if it's really Cocker singing. While singing, Cocker starts drinking his beer. I guess you guys can imagine what would happen when he's singing while drunk. An extremely funny skit.
The parody of Star Trek in this video is REALLY, REALLY funny!!! This basically shows the very last episode of Star Trek, and how the television executives (Elliot Gould and Garrett Morris) tell the Star Trek crew (Belushi as Captain James T. Kirk and Chevy Chase as Spock) that the Nielsen's Ratings for this show have hit rock bottom. Eventually they tear down everything around the set (even Spock's ears), and Kirk is left alone. He finishes by saying how he has found intelligence everywhere in the galaxy. This is better for the anti-Star Trek fans out there.
The last skit is one of those Schiller's Reels skits where an old Belushi visits the graves of all his friends and tells us how they died (Bill Murray dies in a car crash and had grown webbed feet). It was hard to tell whether or not I should laugh at this one. This skit only confuses me.
Apart from that, this is perhaps one of the best SNL videos out there, and I'd strongly recommend any SNL or Belushi fan to get this. You'll laugh so hard, that you'll be crying on the floor.
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