If this film is a comedy, neither Ossie Davis nor Bruce Campbell felt it necessary to play their respective roles for laughs. And it is funny - laugh out loud, leave with a s**t-eating perma-grin so people on the street look at you like you are crazy funny - but it is also deeply poignant and moving, no doubt a quality of the short story painstakingly preserved.
I won't rehash the plot here - it's available online if you need it. What's important - especially in light of how the plot sounds in synopsis - is that we aren't given the director and actors' tongue in cheek interpretation of the story. It may sound outlandish and absurd, but by god, they're going to tell it to you with a straight face and the sort of free expression that comes from everyone thinking they're crazy anyway. As a result, if there's melodrama or comedy or camp, it's in our own minds, in our jaded knee-jerk reaction to too many popcorn screwball comedies. This story is about a mummy the same way Pogue and Cronenberg's THE FLY is about a guy turning into a fly - that is to say, superficially, but other than that, not at all. BUBBA HO-TEP is about redemption, age, wisdom, the chances we don't take, the friends who are true friends, and how any little thing that matters to us can galvanize us to accomplish feats we never thought possible, and that no one would expect of us.
The film is an adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's Bram Stoker Award nominee short story. However, the best way I can describe it is to say that Stephen King is all over this thing, in the best way imaginable - not the Stephen King of the mainstream cinema, reduced to single "thriller" or "horror" or "coming of age" genres, but the Stephen King of the page, funny, scary, campy, and deadly serious by turns, with perfectly-timed reversals and reprieves.
I am still smiling as I write this. Without question, BUBBA HO-TEP is the best film I have seen in 2003. Hail to the King, baby.
I won't rehash the plot here - it's available online if you need it. What's important - especially in light of how the plot sounds in synopsis - is that we aren't given the director and actors' tongue in cheek interpretation of the story. It may sound outlandish and absurd, but by god, they're going to tell it to you with a straight face and the sort of free expression that comes from everyone thinking they're crazy anyway. As a result, if there's melodrama or comedy or camp, it's in our own minds, in our jaded knee-jerk reaction to too many popcorn screwball comedies. This story is about a mummy the same way Pogue and Cronenberg's THE FLY is about a guy turning into a fly - that is to say, superficially, but other than that, not at all. BUBBA HO-TEP is about redemption, age, wisdom, the chances we don't take, the friends who are true friends, and how any little thing that matters to us can galvanize us to accomplish feats we never thought possible, and that no one would expect of us.
The film is an adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's Bram Stoker Award nominee short story. However, the best way I can describe it is to say that Stephen King is all over this thing, in the best way imaginable - not the Stephen King of the mainstream cinema, reduced to single "thriller" or "horror" or "coming of age" genres, but the Stephen King of the page, funny, scary, campy, and deadly serious by turns, with perfectly-timed reversals and reprieves.
I am still smiling as I write this. Without question, BUBBA HO-TEP is the best film I have seen in 2003. Hail to the King, baby.