The barrier that looms over so many posthumous artist biographies isn't broken through here, but Cutler's documentary does get you close up so you can feel the texture and sense the breadth of that wall.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 5, 2021

Even though Cutler takes creative license, occasionally using animation and intertitles to insert unnecessary commentary for dramatic effect, the impact of the never-heard-before audio is astounding.

| Dec 30, 2020

It is terribly sad and one more reminder that fame on a mass level can be a curse. Why the best ones rarely feel they deserve it remains a mystery this movie doesn't try to solve.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 30, 2020

This felt more like a simple refocusing of our attention, as the parade of greatest-hits clips played on, and the admiring voices commented and sorrowed in turn. Not quite a waste, but a missed opportunity for sure.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2020

Highlighted by never-before-heard audio interviews that were part of a 2005 oral history, this polished, affecting overview is far from exhaustive but skilfully sums up Belushi's life and death.

| Dec 30, 2020

R.J. Cutler's Belushi is a far more rounded look at the self-destructive comedy great than most of what we have seen before.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 1, 2020

Cutler's documentary skip-walks a fine line between a great, unstable talent's rise and fall, and between the un-tender trap of addiction and the joyous energy of a Chicago-bred giant.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 24, 2020

His fatal flaw was that he could never be completely satisfied. Fortunately anyone watching this documentary is bound to be precisely that.

| Nov 23, 2020

Belushi's story is heavy on the "what-might-have-been", which leaves much scope for fondness and generosity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 21, 2020

We see examples of his talent, but I feel like some more context in the scheme of things would have been useful here. It's not the ultimate documentary of John Belushi that we still need to see.

| Nov 21, 2020

It ultimately doesn't really get you inside of what were his demons... As a character study, it didn't quite fill out.

| Nov 21, 2020

I like appreciating how beloved he was, but I don't feel like I knew him any better [afterwards].

| Nov 21, 2020

It's an unusually well-rounded picture of a man, an era (there is a lot of insider chat about early SNL) and a love story, too.

| Nov 20, 2020

The tears of a clown remains one of comedy's most familiar and enduring cliches, but "Belushi" still captures the truth of it through this window in time.

| Nov 20, 2020

That you still want to keep basking in the "But nooo!"s and Joe Cocker imitations and food-fight exclamations ad infinitum is the ultimate tribute to its subject. You'd even sit through a decent-enough greatest-hits rehashing to rewatch them.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2020

"Belushi" taps the sweetness in a cultural fixture with an irreplaceably wild sense of fun.

| Nov 20, 2020

Cutler wisely lets those voices tell the story, with no overarching narrator; the closest is SNL alum Bill Hader doing a spookily spot-on job of mimicking Belushi's voice to read his letters, often aided by effective, starkly drawn animation.

| Original Score: B | Nov 20, 2020

A documentary about the comedian and actor, based on interviews done with his widow, treats its subject with a scrutiny and reverence usually reserved for more serious figures.

| Nov 17, 2020

[A] meticulous and touching life-and-death-of-a-comedy-legend documentary...

| Oct 27, 2020

It's always fun to sit through a clip reel when the talent quotient is this high, but "Belushi" doesn't sugarcoat the sadness at the core of the actor's legacy.

| Original Score: B | Oct 21, 2020