Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) Reviewed
JFK (Ossie Davis) and Elvis (Bruce Campbell) ...SEEMED like a cool idea.
BUBBA HO-TEP (2003)
Bruce Campbell, bless his heart, plays an elderly Elvis with a broken hip in the same old folks home as Ossie Davis’ black, but underplayed, JFK (!), circa: now. They battle a mummy. Campbell gives the best performance of the movie and his career. He’s a surprisingly subtle, sharp and sympathetic E, who’s spent the last two decades bitterly mulling over his lost career that he handed off to an impersonator he hired to replace him for life. Davis’ character may or may not be Jack Kennedy, but he does have a magic bullet scar on the back of his head and a room dressed like the Oval Office. The mummy steals souls by sucking them out of the assholes of old people – and that may be where the scales tipped for the ME. The mummy element of the plot seems force fed to a movie that didn’t need or want it. As a metaphor it’s thin and incoherent. That Phantasm director, Don Coscarelli, is responsible is disappointing. At the end of the day, Bubba Ho-Tep turns out being a better conversation piece, than a movie. **
