365 Films A Year!

Seriously, how did this film not work? You’ve got Elvis (Bruce Campbell) and JFK (Ossie Davis) teaming up to fight a mummy/zombie/killer terrorizing an old folks home.

I think the real problem is that the film never quite decides if it wants to be a wacky over-the-top comedy or a poignant end-of-life drama. It ends up mixing both together and they don’t go together as well as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, let me tell you.

Campbell makes a fine Elvis, as you may have suspected. And I think a serious drama about an elderly Elvis would be well served by his presence. And when Bubba Ho-Tep veers into this territory, Campbell handles it well. But as soon as you start to settle in, there’s a killer zombie mumy running around.

Ossie Davis is a fine actor and I get that part of the joke for his character is that despite being black, he is convinced he is the real JFK. Elvis eventually just accepts this as truth, but it’s hard to tell if he is sincere or merely being expediant.

The plot itself doesn’t differ too much from standard B-movie horror material. It’s only in who is doing the monster-slying that things stand out. (Old folks for one thing, historic icons for another.)

Boy, I wanted to like this. I thought it would at least be a crazed bizarro trip, if not laugh-out-loud funny. But there’s far too much musings on the nature of death and age, far too many pitiful views of elderly people nearing their end, far too little joy. One wonders, as Elvis and JFK make their stand against the evil, just what they are defending. The film gives them nothing to really fight for, so the audience has little invested in their success or failure.

Ultimately, this one was a nice idea that just doesn’t work.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 10:40 pm and is filed under 2002, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.