Review of "Bubba Ho-Tep" (2003)

Here are a couple of warnings before you read this review. Yes, it contains spoilers, but that's not the important caveat. The real warning here is that I am a big Bruce Campbell fan. I saw Bubba in a room packed with Bruce Campbell fans - in a room, in fact, where Bruce Campbell himself spoke to the crowd. There was a lot of cheering, roaring laughter, yelling, and other rowdy crowd-type stuff going on. There is no way my opinion on this movie could not be affected by the fun Saturday night Rocky-Horror-ish setting in which I first saw it. Just about everyone in the theater seemed to love the movie (and Bruce) - but that's not to say "Bubba Ho-Tep" is perfect, or even nearly so.

Many of my all-time favorite movies are ones I sat down to watch with absolutely no idea what would happen. The first time I saw "Man Bites Dog" was wonderful. I had no idea what to expect. What a dark, hilarious surprise it was! Coming to a movie with preconceived notions of what it should/could/might be is a recipe for leaving disappointed, but it does happen. Nothing in life exists in a vacuum. With Bubba, I was really "hyped". Hell, Bruce was waiting in the wings while I was watching! My first viewing of "Bubba Ho-Tep" was done with the opposite of "no expectations" - I just knew it was going to be funny and fun.

Another movie like "Bubba" for me is "Kill Bill". After all the trailers, articles, interviews, press clips, and rave reviews I've seen/read/heard relating to that movie, if it isn't the best experience I've had in my entire life - if the sky doesn't open up and dump pizza in my lap while angels sing and earthquakes rock my chair - I'll probably be let down. Tarantino (like Campbell, a member of the Big Chin Club) surely knows about the burden of expectations. He made "Pulp Fiction" early in his career - what a mixed blessing! My theory is that maybe that's why Quentin is releasing a special version of "Bill" for Japan. That way, if any Western critics (or me) aren't impressed, he can always say, "Yeah, but you should see the Japanese cut - it's fucking amazing!"

Damn, I haven't even seen "Bill" yet and I've just devoted part of this article to it. See what I mean about hype? It's a vicious circle. I get hyped, I hype you, we hype each other, and if Tarantino doesn't deliver, we get a bunch of torches and pitchforks and show up outside his mansion chanting in Latin.

I tried to remain rational during my preparation to see "Bubba Ho-Tep". Though I'd watched the movie trailer, I was careful not to read any reviews that might give away too much of the plot. I avoided discussions of the film on forums. I wanted to be a relatively clean slate. Even with all that, I couldn't escape the hype. I was absolutely convinced that this film was going to be a hilarious quirky horror-comedy, or maybe a comedy-horror. Horror, comedy, quirky, undead, Bruce Campbell? That sounds a lot like one or two of my favorite horror movies of all time! But I'll remain objective until I actually see it. (Yeah, right!)

Then, after all that, the theater went dark and the crowd roared.

In "Bubba Ho-Tep", we discover that Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) switched places with an impersonator years ago and was unable to switch back. The fake Elvis ends up dying infamously, while the real Elvis - waylaid by a broken hip - ends up in a Texas rest home. Stripped of his fame and health, Elvis finds himself without a purpose in life. When he traded identities years ago, he had no idea he'd end up crippled and alone. Elvis would give anything to have his life back, but that's just not possible.

He befriends a Black man (Ossie Davis) who's convinced he's John F. Kennedy. "They" replaced his missing brains with a bag of sand, dyed him Black, and dropped him off at the home. Like Elvis, JFK feels abandoned and aimless.

Purpose comes to the unlikely duo when they make a shocking discovery. An ancient Egyptian zombie-looking mummy is using their nursing home as its personal hunting grounds. Beyond the fact that his life is at stake, Elvis becomes personally offended by the mummy picking his housemates off like sheep. The zombie-mummy throws their uselessness and age back in their faces. Instead of cowering, our heroes get angry.

Based on a Joe Lansdale short story, "Bubba Ho-Tep" has great comic & scary potential. The premise of the movie is original, and rife with opportunities for dark humor and gory action. There's the preposterously twisted premise that Elvis and JFK (a black JFK at that) are not only alive, but stuck in the same rest home in Texas. Two decrepit old men rediscover their will to live when pitted against an ultimate and badly-dressed evil. Even more intriguing, this is an evil that preys on the most helpless part of society, the abandoned elderly - a wimpy soul sucker!

Campbell has a good deal of dialog here - much of it when Elvis monologues on getting old, looking back on your life and what he has or hasn't made of it. This works well. It's the heart of the movie, its philosophical side. In person, Campbell said that "Bubba" is a movie about redemption - and when you remove the monsters, dead bodies, giant bugs, and other silly stuff, it really can be looked at as one man's attempt to understand and accept his past, and make the best of what's left of his life. On that level alone, it's an interesting movie - as well as probably being Campbell's best "acting" role yet.

This movie is miles above the "Scream 6 vs. Scary Movie 9" formula stuff that corporate studios are churning out lately. But it isn't quite the action-horror-dark-comedy instant classic I imagined either. It all comes back to the burden of high expectations. In my head, I pictured the movie as "Evil Dead 2" with geriatric heroes channeling pop-culture icons. That isn't the movie they made. The real "Ho-Tep" (as opposed to the one in my head) is a softer, slower film. The Elvis jokes seemed a little stale in parts, and I couldn't help but be somewhat disappointed by the relative lack of action. Is this fair? Is Ossie Davis's character really JFK? Who knows?

I'll have to see "Bubba Ho-Tep" a few more times before I'm sure about my final judgment. For now, I definitely recommend that you see the movie for yourself while it's still in theaters - just make sure you don't read any reviews first!