Customer Reviews

Wired [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Not much could be said about John Belushi's life. He lived it way too fast and that was what killed him. I've only recently heard from a friend that they actually made a movie about Belushi, much like they did to other SNL stars who have passed on, like Andy Kaufman and Gilda Radner. It was then did I hear the film was blasted by numerous critics and fans at the box office, calling it a piece of garbage that would make John spin in his grave. I figured it was worth seeing, becaue I was a big fan of his, so I managed to buy a copy (for only $0.98, when about a week later, it went up to about $70!) from Ebay. Not expecting much, I tuned in and became wired (no pun intended). Essentially, the whole film is like Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" with a nasty twist in the end.

Most importantly, the film is played out like A JOHN BELUSHI FILM, not a film about john belushi. No, that's not supposed to be Michael Chiklis playing John...that's actually John! Ah, forget it.

Well, how do we start? We open up on the evening of March 5, 1982, with the dead body of Belushi being reeled into a morgue. Hey awakens, suddenly, as if nothing had happened to him recently. Frightened and confused, John attempts to escape the morgue dressed only in a blanket. He's then picked up by a cab driver, named "Angel"...oh, geez, I guess you know where this is going. Angel is John's Puerto Rican Guardian Angel ("Well you sure f**cked up, pal!") and his job is to take John back into the past and show him basically where he screwed up. Meanwhile, after hearing about John's death, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward jumps on the topic, wondering about whether or not he should investigate. During this time, we are shown SNL skits that have never existed (Samurai baseball?!?), songs that the Blues Brothers never have sung (634-5789) and an ending that may prove John attempted to save his life from the speedball his took by playing a game of pinball with Angel!

It's very pathectic, yes, but then again, no one else would do a Belushi biopic. The cast is very weird. Chiklis however is very, very good with Belushi and gets his voice, look and style down good, while the others need some practice. Larry Grooms, who plays Dan Aykroyd, looks more like Kevin Nelon and sounds more like Jimmy Stuwart. Don't even get me started on the guy who played John Landis. Geez, he didn't even look like the guy! Much less, sound like him! J.T. Walsh is basically the only celebrity in the film and he was pretty good playing straight as an arrow Bob Woodward. Some scene were quite odd, like the confrontation between Woodward and Belushi (WTF?) in what the director was trying to say was "Purgatory". The ending kinda hints that Belushi went to Hell, which upsetted many fans (including me). The budget supposively was so shoe-string, that they couldn't get the rights to several of the SNL skits, (which is the reason for the random and lame skits that they show instead). I suggest that WIRED should be redone into a better movie! Period!

If you are a John Belushi fan or Michael Chiklis fan do yourself a favor... DON'T BUY THIS TAPE! This movie stinks! I am a huge Belushi fan and I like Chiklis in The Shield, but watching this movie just made me feel sorry for both of them. It has a rotten plot, premise and script. Please, for the love of humanity, stay away from this movie. Don't say I didn't warn you.

This is the kind of movie where after watching it, you want to demand your two hours back. For those of you who don't feel like wasting your time, here's a summary of the film: John Belushi dies of a drug overdose and then magically wakes up right before his autopsy. With the help of his sidekick guardian angel named (get this..)ANGEL, he re-lives points in his wild life, eventually realizing the error of his ways. Sound like a Charles Dickens story? Almost. The only difference is, he never comes back to life. Don't waste your money on this horrible excuse for a film. If you want to see how crazy John Belushi's life was, read the book the movie was based on (also titled Wired) or just watch one or two episodes from the early days of SNL. This movie covers absolutely NO new ground regarding Belushi's life.

Everything for this movie was perfect: Chiklis did a great impression of Belushi, so did the gut playing Akyroyd. Perfect, even some of the scenes were accurate like the book, "Wired"

But you know what REALLY baffeled me? The fact that they had to make this movie as the GHOST of Belushi looking back on his life is what made this movie a tragedy!! I had absolutely no idea that this would not be a fictional story of Belushi.

Like the reviewer from Connecticut said, "It seems like a Dickens story trying to give Belushi a chance...but he never gets it!"

If they would have just made this film STRICTLY like the book, without the fictional stuff, then it would have been great! If there is an afterlife, I sure hope that Belushi doesn't know about this film.

I was one of the unfortunate people who actually saw this movie in a theatre (me and three others: two walked out and the other would have but I was his ride).
I'd read the book a couple of times and was impressed with its lean reportage and strict adherence to facts.
Then I saw this movie....
It's bad enough to go through the harrowing final days of Belushi in the book, but the movie takes it one disturbing step further: John didn't just die, he went to hell.
Was this some producer's revenge for John denying the industry future profits for movies he wouldn't be around to make anymore? "Hey, Belushi's crowd is a wild-and-crazy audience, so let's make his tragic death a wild-and-crazy movie!"
I'm glad this movie tanked.

Chiklis does such a wonderful job of playing Belushi, but--for anyone who even remotely liked Belushi--this movie is infuriating and depressing.

As others have mentioned, if this movie had been filmed in the book's style (worth reading, by the way), it could have been terrific. Instead, they messed up the movie with some really dumb fiction that ruins everything else. The movie starts out with John Belushi's body being wheeled into the morgue, and his ghost gets up off the table and does the whole "looking back on my life" bit. This is annoyingly unbearable! Even the most diehard Belushi fan will find this to be a frustrating waste of time. I was incredibly disappointed. Most definitely this is a "walk out" movie where most people would prefer to be doing anything but watching it! Save your money and get the Woodward book, "Wired." You'll enjoy the book far more.

The lopsided nature of the book Wired is amplified in the movie version. While the book focused very heavily on Belushi's drug addictions, there were references to his work and other facets of his personality outside of the cocaine-addled, binging monster; there was at least an attempt to provide a rounded portrait of Belushi as a human being (admittedly a weak attempt, but one nonetheless). With Wired the movie, one gets little sense of Belushi as being anything other than an obnoxious celebrity who took drugs. In addition, the movie has Belushi acting in SNL skits that never existed, singing Blues Brothers songs that the band never sung, and many of the persons in Belushi's real life have different names in the film (as the production was threatened with many lawsuits even before filming began). The filmic convention of having the recently deceased Belushi's ghost viewing various drug binges he undertook while alive is poorly executed, and the final scenes of Belushi's ghost playing a pinball game with his guardian angel in exchange for his life back if he wins are in the poorest taste (as is the vivid implication that Belushi went to hell because of the way he died). The narrative is all over the place in terms of chronology, with too many fast-forwards and flashbacks - unless one has read the book very carefully, one would be excused for being confused many times during the film as to when what is happening onscreen was supposed to have taken place. About the only parts of the film that work well and ring slightly true are the scenes lifted verbatim from Woodward's book, along with an energetic performance by Michael Chiklis as Belushi. Those two elements, along with a strong (if misguided) sense of courage on the part of the producers for making the film at all (considering the pressure they were under not to) give this a two-star rating.

I remember when this came out in 1989. The movie never made it to where I lived (which I found out why when it was released on VHS), so I had only the soundtrack of Wired to go by and clips from a movie trailer about Wired. I thought, "Hey, these guys look and act like Belushi and their singing is pretty good, so I can't wait to see it." I thought it would have been like other bios at the time, like La Bamba, The Buddy Holly Story, Sweet Dreams, Elvis or Great Balls Of Fire. But my god...why did they have to have this be about a dead John Belushi looking back at his life? Really? Not only that, but even when the soul of Belushi discovers the error of his ways (like Dickens or Jimmy Stewart did), he still has to be dead and doesn't get to go back. Could you have pictured if La Bamba started after Ritchie Valens got killed seeing a burnt plane in cornfield and had an angel take his ghost back in time to look back on his life and singing career? No wonder many early SNL actors and Dan Akyroyd hated this movie. This movie would honestly not have been so bad if they made this a bio movie like Walk the Line or La Bamba, etc.

The only thing I'll disagree with critics is when they said this movie focused too much on him using drugs and made him look negative. I never got that feeling. However, when you die (young) of a drug overdose, it's hard to believe that you wouldn't be wild or crazy. You know? I do agree the whole idea of having a dead Belushi look back on his life was stupid and should have just been a regular biopic movie like the ones I mentioned above.

Rumor has it a new bio movie about Belushi is in the works. Let's hope it's better than that. Really, this movie could at least have been a high-B list movie instead of a bomb. May Belushi rest in peace.

John Belushi was a great comedian.

"Wired" is not a great movie. True, the material follows that which is transcribed in Bob Woodward's biography of Belushi. However, unlike the serious normality of the book, "Wired" is doomed from the start - I am spoiling nothing to say that the beginning of the movie has the ghost of Belushi trying to escape the autopsy room in just a hospital sheet for clothing.

I find that to be a rather grim idea and way to present this movie. Whilst Michael Chiklis does a passable impersonation of John Belushi, the supporting cast seem to be sleepwalking their way through this film.

Unlike the book that "Wired" comes after, the movie is erraticly paced - slow and plodding most of the time, interspersed with scenes of high energy that have little effect.

I don't mean to sound deliberately harsh about "Wired". It's just best to steer clear if you're a fan of Belushi - I know that I am and watching this movie, I learnt nothing I didn't already know. Stick to the book if you want to learn about John Belushi, and give this decidedly hit-and-miss movie a miss.

I owned this movie and thought it was a really good movie. I just wish they would transfer it to DVD, I'd get a copy. I'm surprised this movie was panned so much at Amazon. At the time of this movies release, it was highly controversial since it involved drug use, but I considered it a hard hitting movie. It certainly made an impact on me! The end of the movie was depressing though, as you are wishing he would live, but in reality you knew that was impossible as he was already dead...............