Years ago Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell made a trio of cult movies: Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. These three films produced a character (played by Campbell) named Ash who was an average Joe who developed courage to fight demons. It was also a series of movies that could have brought Campbell to the forefront to start a nice career---but it did not.
Later Campbell would make The Adventures of Brisco County Jr for TV. It was a short-lived series, but it received a great deal of critical acclaim. Once more it opened a window that could have pushed Campbell forward--but nothing happened.
Whether it is bad career choices, or a bad agent, Bruce Campbell has not made the leap from direct-to-DVD movies to quality films.
Along comes My Name is Bruce. The description of the film reads well: actor is mistaken for his character Ash and asked to save town from demon. It sounds fun. Somewhere someone takes a decent idea and makes it a poor direct-to-DVD movie. It would have been so much better had the filmmakers not made the character a run-down, alcoholic, self-absorbed, jerk of a human being. There was too much time spent on the whining and drinking binges of the character and not on the storyline. The script was badly written---someone forgot that the movie was supposed to be about the actor morphing into Ash to fight a real demon. Now that would have been a fun story---actor comes to town---finds out demon is real---after some event he morphs into the Ash character and fights the demon. It would have given the Campbell fans something to laugh at---Bruce reciting some of his old Evil Dead lines as Ash---"This is my boomstick"---that was what was advertised on the description of the movie, but that was not the end product. The end product was a terrible film not worth renting.
My Name is Bruce is another example of why Bruce Campbell will be forever linked to bad direct-to-DVD sci-fi movies and cameos on the Spiderman films.
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