DVD review: "My Name is Bruce"

From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.  

“My Name Is Bruce”

With its kitschy horror, wisecracking humor and do-it-yourself production values, “My Name Is Bruce” lives up to its promise as the ultimate Bruce Campbell movie.

As with his funny 2005 book “Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way,” the B-movie star brings a hilarious, ego-defying brand of meta humor to the low-budget film. He plays a boozy, womanizing, obnoxious version of himself, an insufferable actor whose career in bargain-basement horror flicks has hit an all-time low with the horrid creature feature “Cave Alien 2″ (a spoof of Campbell’s Sci-Fi Channel movie “Alien Apocalypse”).

When a group of sex-crazed teenagers in small-town Gold Lick, Ore., defile the ancient graves of Chinese miners, they accidentally unleash the fearsome deity Guan-di, Chinese protector of the dead and bean curd.

Jeff (Taylor Sharpe), the only teen to survive Guan-di’s initial attack, is a Bruce Campbell superfan, and he persuades the townsfolk that their only hope is to kidnap Bruce and pit him against the deadly demon.

Convinced the situation is an elaborate birthday hoax arranged by his agent (Ted Raimi, entertaining in multiple roles), Bruce goes along with the villagers – until his first encounter with Guan-di. Bruce then must decide whether he has any real-life heroics in him.