Every day Robert Saucedo shines a spotlight on a movie either so bad it’s good or just downright terrible. Today: Hail to the king!
My Name is Bruce is the perfect film for this column — a bad movie about bad movies.
Bruce Campbell, who also directed the film, stars as himself, a B-movie actor famous for making some of the worst movies known to mankind (not including, of course, the Evil Dead series). Down on his luck and more then a little dependent on the sauce, the film’s exaggerated version of Campbell is a complete asshole.
In what is essentially a coming-of-actor movie, Campbell is kidnapped by a dedicated fan and tricked into fighting a real-life monster that is plaguing a small mining community.
Bruce Campbell’s dedication to the part and willingness to throw everything he has on the screen makes the film more then enjoyable for those that are already fans of his work. Unfortunately, a terrible script, unbelievably bad acting from his co-stars and cheesy special effects firmly plant this movie alongside the rest of Campbell’s growing library of bad movies.
But that’s exactly how it should be.
Campbell has never been one to shy away from his role as the King of B-Movies. I don’t feel I’m alone in saying that Campbell’s acting chops could have (and perhaps should have) taken him far in Hollywood. He could have been a big action star (or at least the next William Shatner).
For whatever reason, though, he has built a career out of bad made-for-SyFy-Channel movies.
It’s only fitting that a movie in which he stars as a version of himself mistaken for the characters he plays in bad b-movies should, in fact, be a bad b-movie.
My Name is Bruce knows exactly who it’s audience is: people who like more-then-slightly racist Chinese stereotypes played by Ted Rami, kids who grew up idolizing Ash from Evil Dead, Internet geeks who can quote Campbell like English majors can quote Dickens and every other aficionado of bad movies currently browsing their local comic book store’s bootleg bin.
Only an actor truly comfortable in his place in Hollywood could parody himself as perfectly as Campbell has done. Campbell knows who his fans are and is willing to give something back that he knows they will enjoy.
Robert Saucedo was one of those kids who grew up idolizing Ash from Evil Dead. Follow him on Twitter @robsaucedo2500.
