I went into this movie with a great dead of skepticism. After all, the original was one of the greatest movies ever and trying to recreate that atmosphere, let alone top it, would be all but impossible. However, within the first five minutes I knew that I'd been worrying about nothing.
I can understand why some people wouldn't like it, whether they are fans of the original or not, and I think they could have done a better job with some parts of the movie (especially the ending) but it was fast paced, fitfully funny, and most importantly, had great music. There is no way that anyone can deny that this movie pulls together the greatest ensemble of super-star musicians ever seen on film. With such legends as B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Winwood, and Lou Rawls you can't go wrong. ESPECIALLY when they're in the same band!! Then you have Eretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett to contend with elsewhere in the movie. And that's not to say the Blues Brothers band do a bad job themselves. With a hilariously literal version of Ghost Riders In the Sky and other greats scattered throughout, there's no way that this film can be faulted for its music.
Nor for that matter can it be faulted for its stunts, with one pile-up containing the most cars wrecked in a single scene in cinematic history and a classic crash involving a car full of members of the russian mafia, a jar of carpet tacs (or as Elwood amusing corrected, "dry wall nails"), a burning strip club, and 50m of a dark Chicago street. Scenes like these only go to prove that Director John Landis has lost none of the excellence he showed in the first blues brothers movie.
If you want mega budget demolitions scenes, a dramatic soundtrack, and award winning Oscar nominated acting, then rent titanic. But if you want great R&B music, impossible stunts, and a whole load of great laughs (aided in no small way by the deadpan acting talents of Dan Ackroyd, John Goodman, Joe Morton and newcomer J.Evan Bonifant), then you can't do too much better than Blues Brothers 2000