Showtime is now running a well-made documentary/portrait about John Belushi. It's cleverly crafted with some very effective animated sequences and loads of audio-only quotes from folks who knew him, many of them (like him) deceased. There are also numerous short clips from his work. As in most such films, the short clips are sometimes frustrating teases for the entire sequences which they don't show you. In a few cases, I could remember him doing something wonderful in the part they cut out.
But overall, I was not a huge fan of Mr. Belushi. I kinda wished he'd stuck around long enough to do some movies that would make me one. Animal House was about the only one I liked and while he was quite good in it, the many parts he wasn't in were as good or better. He was in some great sketches on Saturday Night Live but so was everyone in that first cast and most of them, I thought, showed more versatility and more allegiance to what I always thought was the First Rule of sketch comedy. That's the one that says you support the others in the scene. You don't make it "every man for himself."
Belushi moved me towards both a better and worse opinion of its subject. If the picture painted of him was true, he was one of those people who often mistreated others around him but had some sort of likeable, inexplicable quality that caused folks to hold him to a different standard and forgive behavior that they'd condemn in anyone else. I generally do not like such people, especially the self-destructive kind.
And yet, so many people in the doc who knew him spoke with such affection and respect that I kept thinking, "There was more to this guy than I thought." If a documentary can achieve that, it's probably a real good piece of work. You may like it even if you didn't like him. And yes, you know how the story ends…but that was one of the tragic things about John Belushi. Even when he was alive, everyone knew how the story was going to end.