My Name Is Bruce (Image Entertainment Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: C+ Film: C+
Ok, who
doesn’t love Bruce Campbell? The bastard
is as charming as heck and with his contribution to the horror/comedy genre
with the Evil Dead Series he has
earned a place in film history and gained a cult following unlike any
other. With all due respect to Bruce
Campbell (love him to death), My Name is
Bruce is a sad, sad departure from the Evil
Dead Films that made his witty quips and mannerisms so memorable. For all intents and purposes Bruce Campbell
is an icon, but this film takes his B-Movie cult status and abuses it to no
end. In My Name is Bruce, Campbell does a first in his film career and
plays “himself,” in a manner of speaking.
The film
starts with Bruce Campbell being a washed up B-Movie Star that can only get
gigs playing a recurring role on a horrific “cave alien” series. Bruce has seemingly lost all grip with
reality and his life as he lives alone, has gone to the bottle, has a stupid dog,
and drunk-dials his ex-wife only to find she is sleeping with people he knows.
One fateful night, however, a drunk Bruce is kidnapped by an obsessed fan and
taken (via car trunk) to a small town in Oregon that begs him to be their
savior. Supposedly a crew of misguided
younglings unleashed Guan Di, the Chinese God of War and protector of bean curd
(say what now?). Thinking that the whole
thing is a setup by his agent, Bruce plays along with the town’s people giving
them the sarcastic and reluctantly hero that they remember from all his
films. Unfortunately, once Bruce gets
face to face with the War God he does what any logical actor would do,
RUN! At first he tries to return to his
normal life, but is soon faced with the seemingly outlandish reality that he
must go back and save these people he abandoned.
The
entire concept of the film is amazingly clever, too bad for Bruce Campbell the
film is horribly executed. Bruce
Campbell is great in the film and really has a ball hamming it up as a
stereotype of himself. The film falls
flat quickly though as it is just too choppy and hokey for its own good. The initial plot seems well enough put
together, but it becomes quite obvious that the whole Guan Di plot is only
loosely tied together and only makes brief appearances to get Bruce to perform
his goofy antics.
I was
truly looking forward to this film, but it just lacked the follow through that
we expect from Bruce Campbell. Besides
his Evil Dead films, his cameos in
shows like Xena and Burn Notice were always brilliant; unfortunately the plot
of this film ruined any chance of classic Bruce. In the end, this was in the name of Bad and
not Bruce.
The
picture, sound and extras are good enough, but far from great. The 1080p AVC encoded 1.78 X 1 film has solid
blacks throughout with mostly well done colors.
The depth was adequate, but the textures seemed to be lacking and a
degree of Macro-blocking was seen throughout.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Track was nice for a low budget film, but
was nothing special but better than I expected.
Most of the time the full speaker range is absent, but when the action
picks up at the end of the film a bit more of the immersive range is utilized.
Most of
the extras are drab and boring and only the Full Length Commentary with the
film’s director and Bruce Campbell stands out as interesting as the charismatic
Bruce Campbell does most of the talking and gives fans what they want to
hear. Other features include “Heart of Darkness- The Making of My Name is
Bruce” and several other “making of featurettes” that are passable because
effort was put into them, but lack any rewatchable quality. The one cool thing about this Blu-ray is a My
Name is Bruce Comic Book that is tucked inside the case; it is visually
pleasing as it is colorful, interesting, and just plain fun.
Overall,
for hardcore Bruce Campbell fans this is a no brainer and a must have for any
collection; but for casual viewers I would call this a definite skip.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
