My Name Is Bruce Review

My Name is Bruce (2009)
By Chris Ward

Let’s get this said first – if you don’t know who Bruce Campbell is, have never seen at least one ‘Evil Dead’ movie or aren’t really into cult cinema at all, then this movie will go straight over your head. If, however, you can’t get enough of the man with the boomstick, then you’ll watch this movie no matter what anyone says about it, and no doubt defend it to the death.

For those who don’t know, Bruce Campbell is a B-movie actor who is best known for playing the wisecracking hero Ash in the ‘Evil Dead’ movies, as well as appearing in such cult classics as ‘Maniac Cop’ and ‘Bubba Ho-Tep’, and also cameo roles in more mainstream fare such as ‘Spiderman 1 & 2’ and a voiceover role in ‘The Ant Bully’. ‘My Name is Bruce’ sees him appearing as a bastardised version of himself in a semi-fictional version of his life. By day he makes the sort of straight-to-dvd, trashy monster flicks that he is best known for, and by night he sits in his white-trash trailer getting drunk and phoning his ex-wife Cheryl (a nice cameo by ‘Evil Dead’ co-star Ellen Sandweiss), who is sleeping with his agent Mills (played by ‘Evil Dead’ actor Ted "brother of ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Spiderman’ director Sam" Raimi, who also has two other roles in the movie). Meanwhile, over in the small mining community of Gold Lick, a teenage Bruce Campbell fan called Jeff has unwittingly woken an ancient Chinese demon called Quan-Di, who protects the cemetery where the Chinese mining workers are buried, and is also the Chinese god of bean curd! Thinking that Bruce must be the only person who could could defeat the demon – he has, after all, defeated the Army of Darkness – Jeff rushes off to find Campbell. Thinking this is some sort of movie promotion set up by his agent, Campbell agrees to play along and goes to Gold Lick ("the sequel to Deliverance!") where, after a meeting with the townsfolk, he finds the demon to be real, but can he become the character he plays in his movies and defeat the monster?

As previously stated, if you’ve no idea who Bruce Campbell is then most of the jokes won’t make much sense. That said, it doesn’t take long to get the idea of what’s happening, so maybe it may just be worth checking out those ‘Evil Dead’ movies after all, just to get more enjoyment out of this movie. Campbell does a brilliant job of sending himself and his career up, and some of the jokes, although slightly crass, are laugh-out-loud funny – the scene where he pushes a wheelchair-bound fan down a hill is hilarious. The supporting cast are great – Grace Thorsen shows promise as the love interest Kelly, who Bruce never quite gets his hands on ("For the love of God, I can smell her Chapstick!"), and the two gay rednecks are great fun – and, of course, the references for all the fanboys are there.

As far as downpoints go, the plot is a bit thin but the jokes and great performances make the movie so much fun it doesn’t matter. It really does come down to whether you like Bruce Campbell, trashy low-budget horror movies or the seemingly new trend of movie stars sending themselves up by playing caricatures of themselves, as Jean-Claude Van Damme has recently done in ‘JCVD’. In all fairness, Campbell is probably one of the best actors to do this sort of thing, having built up a sizeable cult following over the last twenty five years, as well as having a great screen persona – it would be hard imagining someone like Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe attempting this kind of thing. The gore is fairly restrained considering the subject’s history, although there are plenty of decapitations, and the script a bit predictable in places, although Campbell’s ability to deliver a line would make some stand-up comics cower in shame.

‘My Name is Bruce’, then – good fun if you like that sort of thing, and probably a waste of an hour and a half if you don’t. Just for the record, I loved it.