The Mummy Review
by Brian Takeshita (brianlt AT aloha DOT net)June 5th, 1999
THE MUMMY
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: **1/2 out of ****
It is the time of the ancient Egyptians, and the pharaoh's mistress is one of the most beautiful women in all the land, coveted so greatly that he forbids her to even be touched by another man. Little does he know that the enchanting Anck-Su-Namum has been doing a little fooling around with the pharaoh's priest of the dead, Imhotep, until the pharoah catches the both of them red-handed. Stabbed in the back by this traitorous act, he gets stabbed in the back once again and for good by the happy couple. Unfortunately for them, the pharaoh's guards burst in to find their ruler murdered and proceed to take the lovers into custody. Of course, when you're talking ancient Egypt, you know they're not just going to the slammer. Anck-Su-Namum is killed, and Imhotep is mummified alive, with a few hundred flesh-eating scarabs for company in his sarcophagus. But that's not all! No, a terrible curse is placed upon his body which will haunt him in the afterlife. One trick, though. If he is ever exhumed, he will return to the earth as a plague upon mankind. Well, there's always a catch, isn't there?
Skip ahead a few thousand years to 1923, where Jonathan (John Hannah) has come into possession of a rare Egyptian artifact. He just wants to sell it, but when his Egyptologist sister Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) opens the artifact and inside finds a map to the lost city of Hamunaptra, where a trove of the pharoah's treasure supposedly exists, they enlist the help of former French Foreign Legionnaire Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and embark upon a journey to rediscover the lost city. The problem is, they're not the only ones looking for the city and its treasure. Three Americans and another Egyptologist, lead by Rick's former comrade-in-arms Beni (Kevin J. O'Connor) are also on the hunt, and upon their arrival at the Hamunaptra ruins, accidentally release our old friend Imhotep, wrapped up in a thirst for revenge against the world.
For those of you looking for an honest-to-goodness scare, look elsewhere because director Stephen Sommers' approach is definately a departure from what we're used to. Sure, there are some suspenseful moments, and a few instances where you catch your breath in your throat, but for the most part THE MUMMY is an action-oriented flick interlaced with a decent amount of humor. Sommers obviously didn't want to gross people out or make them scream, but just give them a good time instead. Keep in mind, however, that "a good time" is a relative term.
The change in approach is due in part to the mummy Imhotep himself. You see, the mummy in THE MUMMY isn't like the ones we've seen in black and white on late night television, arms out in front, slowly moving forward toward its victim. No, this one is able to change itself into a whirlwind to move itself across the desert, convert itself into a pile of sand in order to slip through a keyhole, and overall just kick some serious ass very quickly. Whereas the thing about the old mummy was that it was slow, but it was going to get you no matter how long it took, this one is much more conducive to an action film. After all, think about how boring it would be to try and revolve an action sequence around a walking Ace bandage moving at a quarter mile an hour. This one is the full blown action mummy with kung-fu grip.
Brendan Fraser's O'Connell also contributes to the action tone, being a stock character for one of these films. O'Connell is brash, confident, full of bravado, but also completely competant. You'd expect to see a guy like him come walking out of an adventure novel. Fraser plays him well, imbuing O'Connell with enough charisma to make us forget that it seems totally normal to him that he's going to have to go and kill this guy who's already supposed to be dead. Rachel Weisz's Evelyn similarly fits right into this film as the book smart, but unworldly damsel. Whereas Fraser plays his part with aplomb, however, Weisz does little to distinguish this movie heroine from countless others in the annals of movie history, an admittedly difficult task when the script provides little help. The rest of the characters are pretty much in the film to fill in the requisite slots, and it's too bad that the script doesn't offer them more than the standard fare.
Visually, this film has some top-notch effects, most notably when it comes to rendering Imhotep. Starting off as a decaying corpse, the mummy hunts down those who released him in order to take their vital organs for his own. As he becomes whole, he "fills out" so that at any given time, he's part live and part dead to some degree, and the line between real and computer generated is virtually unnoticable.
Unfortunately, while THE MUMMY presents us with a very unconventional mummy movie, it's still a very conventional action adventure film, complete with such cliches as the old washed up guy who gets to prove himself one last time, the ever popular leaning against a wall and revealing a hidden passage to a secret room, and not just one, but two people getting done in because of their own greed. THE MUMMY gives us virtually nothing new, and therein lies its ultimate downfall. I don't think everyone wants to watch a film that just has more of the same stuff you've seen in so many other films - except oh, yeah, this one has a mummy.
Review posted June 4, 1999
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.
