SF Signal: MOVIE REVIEW: Bubba Ho-tep

MOVIE REVIEW: Bubba Ho-tep

REVIEW SUMMARY: The movie was touted as coming from the makers of Phantasm and Army of Darkness.. Bubba lacked much of the low-budget fright factor of Phantasm and the goofy campiness of AoD
MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A mummy dressed in a cowboy hat and boots feed on residents of an East TX nursing home.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Bruce Campbell is always funny and works great as Elvis. Ossie Davis as JFK also very funny. Clever story premise.

CONS: Even though Campbell does a really good Elvis, it seems he plays it too straight.

BOTTOM LINE: More Bubba Ho-Hum than scary, and not as funny as previous Campbell films. Still, a fun way to spend an hour and a half.

My expectations were high. I really like Bruce Campbell and the movie was directed by Don Coscarelli of the Phantasm and Beastmaster films. While the film was not disappointing, it just didn't realize it's full potential.

For those who don't know, a nursing home is attacked at night by a cowboy mummy that comes back to life after a touring bus carrying his sarcophagus crashes on a bridge near the home. The mummy feeds on souls of the old to gain life and goes largely unsuspected, since it's not all that unusual for people in such places to turn up dead. The home is inhabited by an elderly Elvis (who describes in the film just how he didn't die) and a man claiming to be JFK (played by Ossie Davis ) who was not assassinated but actually abducted by aliens (they dyed his skin).

There were hints of Phantasm in Bubba; one thing that immediately comes to mind was the giant scarab beetles that reminded me of the huge indestructible fly from Phantasm.

My biggest complaint with the movie was that I like Campbell for his slapstick and there wasn't enough of that in this movie. I also like his facial expressions, and with his Elvis sideburns and sunglasses it was hard to see that.

The mummy also was just not scary. It was actually not much of anything. It wasn't all that scary looking, nor was it all that funny looking.

Still, all that said, it was a fun story. The elderly Elvis with a walker and the black JFK duo really worked well, and the story moved along well enough and wasn't predictable.