Bruce Campbell movies are kind of hit and miss for me. Of course I loved the Evil Dead trilogy. Bubba Ho-Tep was awesome too. But it seems that for every great, idiosyncratic Bruce Campbell movie, he does another that's horrifically bad. And not in a "so bad it's good" sort of way, either. I'm talking about you, Man With a Screaming Brain. So it's with a bit of trepidation that I popped in My Name is Bruce. The movie is about a kid who offends Chinese burial grounds and unleashes the Chinese god Guan-di on a small town. The kid is a big fan of Bruce Campbell, and he reasons that only Bruce (who, obviously, plays himself in the movie) can eradicate Guan-di. The kid brings him to his small town and Bruce receives a hero's welcome (as well as catching the eye of the kid's mom). Bruce thinks it's all a gag with actors reinacting a movie, so he's all Mr. Fancy Pants action hero until he discovers the Chinese god is real. He's faced with a dilemma: follow his cowardly instincts and make a break for it, or confront the monster and save not only his biggest fan, but also the mom who has caught his fancy.
Let's use the old standby movie review format:
The Good
Bruce actually does a good job in this movie. He doesn't explore much new ground in terms of character development, but Bruce was fun to watch and he plays his role pretty well. I liked seeing the "actor" side of Bruce, i.e. the demanding, petulant child-like star. There were a few scenes in which he really hammed it up, but for the most part he was pretty funny, in a Bruce Campbell sort of way.
It's good that he comes off well because the movie is very much a tribute to Bruce, with plenty of fun references to his previous movies. And there's a movie-within-a-movie parody that was pretty funny as he pokes fun not only at the movies he's in, but also the characters in which he's typecast.
The Bad
I had a hard time warming up to the monster. The costume was pretty bad and it had the overall feel of a Scooby Doo monster-of-the-week. I would have much preferred zombies.
Some scenes are over the top, trying really hard to be funny but missing the mark entirely. Specifically, I'm talking about the scenes with Ted Raimi. He played multiple characters in this movie and they all failed miserably.
The Ugly
I saw the move on Blu-Ray, but the transfer was abominable so I might as well have watched it on DVD. The pixellation was so prevalent in some shots that I felt like I was watching a compressed WMV movie.
Conclusion
If you've never seen a Bruce Campbell flick, this movie will probably do nothing for you. But being a Bruce Campbell fan myself, I enjoyed it. Don't expect anything even remotely deep, and certainly don't expect anything as fun or as interesting as the Evil Dead trilogy. But if you've enjoyed Bruce's movies in the past, you'll likely find something in this movie that you'll enjoy.
Rating: 3/5 Deadites
Trailer:
3 comments:
Your review is pretty much right on. I saw this at a screening Bruce Campbell attended and did a Q&A. The movie got an ok response. There were some fun parts, but even the hardcore audience seemed so-so on the movie overall. In fact, I think it sort of stalled the Q&A.
Speaking of the Q&A, don't ever make an effort to go to one. At least one where the speaker has done it hundreds of times. His answers were so canned that any decent fan would have already known the answers. It was pretty weak. Again, I really like Bruce Campbell and the Evil Dead movies.
On the plus side, Joe LoDuca was there. Most people didn't know, or care, who he was so I got to talk to him for a few minutes. I had a connection to him because my uncle is friends with him. So it was fun to hear about how he shared Evil Dead demos with my uncle as they drove around.
I agree that Q&A's are largely worthless. I went to one over at UVA featuring Nicolas Cage. Much like your experience with Bruce, his answers were so rehearsed that it felt like he was on a late night talk show. And he only spent 5 minutes answering questions. Not only that, but after the Q&A we had to sit through one of his horrible movies. It was definitely not worth the hour or two spent waiting in line.
I think the key is to go to a Q&A done by an old man that likes to tell inconsistent and rambling stories. I went to one done by Stan Lee and not only were his answers off-the-cuff, detailed, and amusing, he did a signing afterwards.
That spectacular old man stayed up until like 2am signing autographs. Line positions were doled out at random, we were near the end, and he was still friendly and on-point by the time we got to him. Complimented my wife's shirt and took the time to read the entirity of what i brought to get signed (a rejection letter from Marvel).
All rambling aside, i've heard Bruce Campbell, hilarious though he is, is also kind of bitter and irritable at fan events.
Post a Comment