MY NAME IS BRUCE

The quiet town of Gold Lick is suddenly shaken by a series of gruesome murders committed by a monstrous being accidentally freed from its tomb by a group of children. Jeff, who is the only survivor among those who awakened the monster, decides to turn to his favorite actor, Bruce Campbell, because he believes him truly capable of confronting monstrous beings and supernatural threats. Campbell, believing that it is an offer for his next film, agrees to follow Jeff, but when he realizes that the threat is real, he will have to face his conscience and his courage. "My Name Is Bruce", the title of the second feature film signed by Bruce Campbell, is explicit about the intentions of the work. No, it is not a documentary about the actor's life, but a singular celebration film made for the numerous fans of Ash J. Williams of "evildeadiana" memory. An actor who turns director to celebrate himself could seem a presumptuous operation and perhaps even detrimental to his fame, but "My Name Is Bruce" is conceived and realized as a message of thanks to the typical fan of the artist rather than as a work of self-celebration. Bruce Campbell is ironic and self-ironic, he treats himself, the world around him, and even the fan he refers to with a complacent semi-demented cynicism; so he shows all the awareness of what he is and what he has become over the years, that is, a cult actor for the younger generations of genre film enthusiasts, but at the same time an artist who, to make a living, is forced to participate in films of the lowest quality. Naturally, Campbell, although drawing from his autobiography, overcharges his character and so we will see him alcoholic and "asshole", a coward attached to money that he squanders punctually on whiskey and prostitutes, a failure who goes around with questionable Hawaiian-style shirts and lives with his dog (also alcoholic!) in a dilapidated camper. Therefore, although the actor talks about himself while mocking the world of C-movies to which he is often dedicated, at the same time he loads his "character" with absolutely devastating tragicomic features for his image, but since it is he himself who does it, one can only applaud his fierce self-irony. But Campbell does not get away with those around him either. The production universe of the films he works on is described as one would in a joke, with arriviste producers who do not care about having to replace an actor with a mannequin and insist on the "good first take" where there is no time and money, despite the fact that the result will be pitiful. In the end, the joke is not too different from reality and the images on the set of the fictional "Cave Alien" are not too far from those of at least a dozen films in which our actor has participated in recent years. And then there are them, the fans, to whom the actor-director dedicates his film. They are nerds from their toenails to the tips of their hair, asocials who know their idols' lines by heart and tend to confuse reality with fiction, mixing the character with the person. All this is told with affection, respect, and sympathy, so if it is the fan who triggers the series of dire events by freeing the monster, it is always he who fixes the problem, as well as the only one to save himself (he knows the rules of horror movies!) from the monster's attack in the introduction. Despite a rather low budget, "My Name Is Bruce" is nevertheless a very dignified film, Campbell has managed to perform miracles with what could potentially have been yet another bad film that paradoxically wanted to parody. Therefore, despite the somewhat TV-movie imprint, "My Name Is Bruce" holds its own very well even in the circuit of more "important" films, presenting above all a beautiful screenplay by Mark Verheiden (the TV series "Smallville", "Heroes", and "Battlestar Galactica"), original and with truly funny dialogues and situations. Moreover, the monster, in its absurdity and despite a cartoon-like look, is really something unusual: an assassin Eastern demon who is also the protector of caglio cheese is not something one sees in movies every day. As usual, Bruce Campbell is exceptional, a character actor who goes beyond simple characterization, and who demonstrates here not only that he is a good actor but also a complete artist, although from the purely imaginative point of view he perhaps owes too much to his friend/colleague Sam Raimi, since some scenes of "My Name Is Bruce" clearly recall "Army of Darkness", a film from which "Bruce" also takes some actors and friends, namely Ted Raimi (who plays no less than three roles here) and Timothy Patrick Quill. "My Name Is Bruce" is a must-see film for those who appreciate Bruce Campbell's work, a man-myth who here finds himself in a successful one-man show. Naturally, those who are not in tune with the actor's career, are disinterested or even do not know him, can, indeed must, avoid the film from which they will probably only catch the negative aspects.