>>REVIEW
MAKE LOVE! THE BRUCE CAMPBELL WAY
Bruce Campbell
St. Martin’s Press, 309 pp.
In the wake of B-movie actor (and vanquisher of the undead) Bruce Campbell’s bestselling autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, the cult icon has decided to write a novel. Since the best advice to authors is to write about what they know, Campbell has decided to write an outrageous fictional account of his on-set hijinks.
Sadly, this premise isn’t nearly as funny as it sounds.
Here, Campbell speculates that, while working on Let’s Make Love, the latest picture from Mike Nichols, starring Richard Gere and Renée Zellweger, he gets embroiled in a few fist fights, a studio conspiracy and an international security incident. As he navigates the slummy nightclubs of Las Vegas and Southern gentlemen’s clubs (for research, of course), he learns that his fans are few and far between, that he brings bad luck to almost every movie that he stars in, and that Gere may not be as much of a pacifist as everyone thinks he is.
While all this has the potential for scathing Hollywood satire, Campbell spends too much time over-explaining the ins and outs of filmmaking to the layman. By dumbing down everything to its lowest common denominator, he beats the life out of the humour in the book like his much-loved character Ash from the Evil Dead series beats up zombies (and if you think that analogy is lame, wait till you see what Campbell has in store).
And that isn’t the least of the book’s problems. Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way is told in such a laid-back, conversational manner that it feels as though no one bothered to edit the thing. Add to that the book’s disjointed, episodic narrative and you have a novel that’s fit for bathroom reading and not much more.
As I tell you all of this, keep in mind that I am a big fan of Campbell (although apparently not big enough), so I actually finished reading the book despite my gut instincts telling me to stop. The over-the-top climax, which finds Campbell involved in a shootout with members of the National Security Association before heading off to jail (there, I spoiled the ending for you so you don’t have to suffer through the book), doesn’t have the humour or tension to justify the limp, one-laugh chapters that preceded it.
Campbell may be a great campy actor, but he should leave the crappy writing to Hollywood. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.