Posted by Frosty

“They Call Me Bruce” Review

written by An Angry Man

Lately, when people ask me if I’ve seen “Kung Fu Hustle,” I like to tell that I haven’t, and that it’s because I liked “Kung Fu Hustle” the first time I saw it, when it was titled “They Call Me Bruce.”  A joke, to be sure, but just to hedge my bets, I figured I needed to brush up on my Kung Fu comedies, and thus, “They Call Me Bruce” was added to my Netflix Queue.

This movie played relentlessly on HBO when I was a small, impressionable boy.  As such, this “comedy” might have something to do with how angry I find myself nowadays.  Anyone who thinks that our society is too politically correct for its own good should be chained to a chair and forced to watch this movie.  And even still, I could envision someone chewing their appendages off trying to escape their shackles after the first few minutes of this rubbish.  Believe it or not, in terms of being politically correct, we’re better off now than in 1982.  Really.  We are. 

Apparently, back in 1982, there was a comedian named Johnny Yune who had enough clout and heat to get a movie made.  Either that, or he had connections with a deep pocketed Neo-Nazi group that wanted to advance its agenda by playing on every single racial stereotype ever imagined.  Sometimes, when done right, a racial comedy can be funny.  “Episode I, Phantom Menace” is a good example of just that (another article, for another time).  But “They Call Me Bruce” was just downright offensive.

The opening credits should be an indication of this.  A small Asian boy is shown running through some “Asian” (i.e. Malibu Hills) countryside in slow motion.  The song playing over this running boy is a woman – Asian of course - singing over and over, “Oriental Boy. Go! Go!”  We’re never told where he should go to, and we’re also not altogether certain why we’re watching an “Oriental boy” running in slow motion in the first place.  The fact that he’s running doesn’t advance the story at all.  Nor the fact that it’s in slow motion either.  Yet, there he is, running in slow motion. 

When the movie starts, that same boy is shown visiting with his dying grandfather.  Just in case you missed it, A does not equal B here.  Running boy.  Dying Grandfather.  Go!  Go!  I know a Johnny Yune Kung Fu spoof may not be the first place to turn to for a lesson in logic, but please, I need a little something to keep me in the movie.

I almost wished it stopped there.  After a death bed discussion with the grandfather yields a mystery woman in New York that will help raise the boy, an adult Johnny Yune is shown, in the very next scene, serving pasta to a table full of Italian men in Los Angeles.  There may be a del_eted scene or five that might explain that jump, however, what that jump actually is never made it into the original cut.  To recap, running boy, dying grandfather, serving pasta to Italians in Los Angeles.

Now, for some reason that I wasn’t able to ascertain, the Italian men were sitting outside.  And I’ll give you one guess what the Italian men did for a living.  Remember now, the movie is rife with obscene stereotypes.  So I guess what they could be were a collection of Gelato salesmen, or pizza chefs, or opera singers.  But of course, they were members of the mafia instead.  They all had woefully inaccurate Italian accents.  As if they couldn’t possibly be Italian with just the greasy black hair and the medallions and the overeating and the marinara sauce.  Good God.  

So while that was happening, I drifted off, and started to contemplate what the next scene might hold for me.  I suspected perhaps that we might find Johnny Yune serving Matzos Ball soup to a table of men counting money and bashing apart Christ figurines.  Or maybe he’d serve tacos to a table full of mustached men while they were between jobs.  But no, sadly enough, the next scene was that of Yune happening upon a black man holding an old white woman at knifepoint.  Seriously.  And Johnny disrupts the hold-up by simply pointing to his “Oriental” face, proclaiming a penchant for Kung Fu, and then, that’s where the movie truly begins.

An Asian man pretending to know Kung Fu to unwittingly smuggle drugs for the Italian mafia from LA to New York, getting involved in racial hi-jinx every step of the way.  That’s it.  There’s your summary.  I couldn’t tell you anymore about the film, as the blood pouring out of my eyes from where I stabbed them with a shish kabob skewer made that feat impossible.  I made it to the 31st minute of the movie before I had to Go! Go! outside and do something productive with my day.