My Name is Bruce Review
Directed by: Bruce Campbell
Written by: Mark Verheiden
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi, Ellen Sandweiss, Grace Thorsen, Taylor Sharpe

I’ll always remember my first encounter with The Chin. A good friend of mine who had already been initiated into the cult of Bruce Campbell made me sit down and watch this strange movie on VHS called Army of Darkness. At the time I don’t think I was aware of the Evil Dead films, but either way, I was sold within a matter of minutes. The whole thing just seemed so fresh and inventive to me, a movie that mixed horror and fantasy with a zany sense of humour that was so infectious that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t everyone’s favourite film.

Years later, Bruce Campbell still isn’t quite what you’d call a household name, but director Sam Raimi has gone on to become an A-list Hollywood director. He does his best to find small roles for Campbell in all of his films, but it’s clear that Raimi has surpassed the point where Campbell can follow. Fortunately for Bruce, he still has his own underground army of fans, and in recent years he has decided to take his career his own hands by directing himself. His feature-length debut Man with the Screaming Brain was an unqualified flop, but could he redeem himself with the self-referential horror-comedy My Name is Bruce?

Sadly, the answer is no. Despite having a potentially fun premise, My Name is Bruce still falls within the realm of some of Campbell’s worst direct-to-DVD atrocities. It certainly can’t qualify as a horror movie since it contains no scares and only cartoony traces of gore, but on the other hand, the humour is so obvious and cheesy that it becomes downright painful to watch.

The story takes place in a small town in Oregon, where a group of teenagers hanging out in a graveyard accidentally awaken Guan-Di, the Chinese god of war. Campbell just happens to be in town shooting his latest schlockfest, Cave Alien 2, and one of his young fans decides to kidnap him in order to convince him to defeat the monster. At first Campbell thinks it is a joke and goes along for the ride, but when he clues in to the truth, he finds himself finally forced to live up to his bold on-screen persona.

Sam Raimi always said that the reason he chose to do Evil Dead for his first movie was because even a bad horror movie is a good horror movie. In the case of My Name is Bruce, however, the terrible script and atrocious acting have no cult appeal because the whole movie is so damn self-aware. You can’t manufacture a movie that is so bad it’s good — it happens by accident (with the exception of maybe Snakes on a Plane).

Fans of actual horror movies will be disappointed to find out that the monster in this movie is just a man in samurai armour with glowing eyes which, while campy and goofy, is not scary or gruesome in anyway. It all feels like an episode of Scooby Doo, which I might have appreciated in another context, but here it’s just too “gee whiz” silly.

The movie was written by Mark Verheiden (Timecop, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica), but despite his impressive geek resume, he is unable to come up with a clever joke to save his life. I mean, the whole movie is basically constructed around finding ways to re-use Campbell’s catch phrases from previous movies, and it just comes off as desperate pandering. How many times have we seen the “actor playing himself in real life as an arrogant asshole” routine anyway? All I need to tell you is that there is a Brokeback Mountain joke using the phrase, “I wish I could quit you”, and that pretty much sums up this movie.

The few moments of comic relief that do work involve Bruce Campbell and his agent (played by Ted Raimi), making use of a long-standing chemistry between the two. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is made up of local talent and non-actors, who just don’t have any sense of comedy outside of the broad and obvious. The Evil Dead’s Ellen Sandweiss also appears in the movie, although once again, it’s mostly just a tip of the hat to fans than anything else.

Now I realize that there are plenty of Bruce Campbell fans out there who will love this movie no matter what anyone says, and that’s totally fine. These are the people that Campbell is relying on to make a living, and I want to see him find steady work just as much as the next guy. He does remain charming even amidst this awkward mess of a movie, but as a director, he is incredibly bland if not inept. Perhaps with Sam Raimi’s help they could have made it work, but overall this just made me embarrassed for poor Bruce. Go ahead and buy it if you want to show your support, but whatever you do, don’t watch it! — Sean

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