The Mummy Review
by Bob Bloom (cbloom AT iquest DOT net)May 9th, 1999
The Mummy (1999) 1 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah and Arnold Vosloo.
At its core, the original version of "The Mummy" was a story of lost love.
A priest in ancient Egypt loses his princess and, after her death, commits blasphemy by trying to use a forbidden incantation to raise her from the dead.
He is caught, condemned and buried alive. Much later - 3,700 years later - he is unearthed and accidentally brought back to life. This living mummy then helps a team of archeologists find the tomb of his lost love so he can again try to read that same spell and bring her back to life.
It was the stellar performance of Boris Karloff that was the main attraction to this - by today's standards - creaky and somewhat campy horror film.
The action-packed remake of this venerable classic owes more to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas than to the Universal studio filmmakers of the early 1930s.
For the new version of "The Mummy" isn't a horror film. It's more a combination of many things - Indiana Jones rip-off, Foreign Legion adventure, Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza and video game shoot-'em-up.
This remake of "The Mummy" may be bigger and incorporate the latest technology in computer special effects, but it definitely is not better. It lacks the two key ingredients that made the original a classic - atmosphere and sincerity.
"The Mummy," starring Brendan Fraser, cannot decide what coat to wear. It continually changes from adventure to horror to spoof, never settling on one course. It also lacks the romanticism of the original.
That much you learn at the outset. Instead of the priest, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), being in love with pharaoh's daughter, he and the pharaoh's mistress are two-timing the Egyptian ruler. He catches them, and they assassinate him.
Captured themselves, she is killed while he, like in the original, is buried alive. However, because of the nature of today's movie audiences, some embellishments are added for thrills. Imhotep has his tongue cut out and a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs are dumped into his sarcophagus.
The story then leaps forward to the Egyptian desert of the 1920s. A band of legionnaires, among them daredevil and dashing Rick O'Connell (Fraser), is battling a group of nomads in the ruins of the ancient, legendary city of Hamunaptra. It's a scene straight out of "March or Die," as O'Connell, the only survivor, is allowed to wander off into the desert.
A couple of years later, O'Connell teams up with a brother-sister pair of treasure-hunting archeologists (Rachel Weisz and John Hannah) to again find Hamunaptra and carry off its treasures.
And just for fun, there's another expedition, racing to the same locale.
Of course, they find the city and inadvertently unleash the dead Imhotep, who is not your slow, stiff-walking, bandage-wrapped dead Egyptian.
No, thanks to computer technology, he can change into sand and be gone with the wind.
He goes after members of the expeditions, stealing their body organs to assist in his regeneration, so he can resurrect his girlfriend and together, they can conquer the world.
"The Mummy" is not dull. It's action-laden in that outlandish, cartoonish way most modern films treat such enterprises. People are mauled, beaten, wounded, but, just like video game characters, they pop right back up and return for more.
Fraser is actually quite good. He gets into the spirit of the proceedings, and keeps his tongue in cheek. He knows this is a lark and goes along for the fun.
Weisz is rather ditsy for an academic and totally unbelievable, while Hannah is just along for comic relief.
Admittedly, this update of "The Mummy" is exciting, but it's also sad. It seems so cynical, so contrived.
In the original, for all his foul deeds, you felt a twinge of sympathy for Imhotep. You even were a bit sorry for him.
In this remake, Imhotep is only pixels and memory bytes, to be shot to pieces and reconstituted as the plot dictates.
And that's too bad. "The Mummy" lacks heart. It's as cold and dead as a sphinx.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or at
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
