The Mummy Review
by Dennis Schwartz (ozus AT sover DOT net)April 19th, 2000
MUMMY, THE (director/writer: Stephen Sommers; cinematographer: Adrian Biddle; editor: Bob Ducsay; cast: Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell), Rachel Weisz (Evelyn), John Hannah (Jonathan), Kevin J. O'Connor (Beni), Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep), Jonathan Hyde (Egyptologist), Oded Fehr (Ardeth Bay), Bernard Fox (Capt. Winston Havlock), Erick Avari (Dr. Bey, the Curator), 1999)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A spoof on the 1932 horror classic The Mummy, in which Boris Karloff played a dead priest who returns to life and falls in love with the pretty girl he feels is the reincarnation of the woman he died for. Unfortunately, in this ridiculous remake, the two films are only the same in name only; though, in the broad sense they are both about a three thousand year Egyptian curse. This Mummy put me into a petulant adolescent mind-set, as I found myself madly screaming for more script, more story, more tomes, after seeing this stinker and found that I could only calm my rage by going to the video tape of the original Mummy and seeing again for myself how richly quaint that film actually was.
This is a film that lives for the cliché, even relishes in it, flaunting it as the reason the film was made in the first place. It is so much like those thrashy "B" films in the early 1950s I saw on a Saturday matinee, where the theater was so noisy the elderly matrons who were the ushers looked like they were having conniptions, as they marched down the aisles with their flashlights shining on the children with loudmouths. Those were the "good old days," when you got to see two pictures like this for the price of one, and didn't give a hoot how raucous the theater crowd was, and how dumb and unbelievable the hero was. This film is a return to that dumbness, only this time its appeal is targeted for a more mature crowd and the price of the movie ticket has skyrocketed.
This is a children's serial adventure thriller, the Indiana Jones kind but without that film's charismatic actors. It is about a high priest, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), who couldn't keep his hands off his lover, the pharaoh's daughter, and was tortured to death by the pharoah when he was caught in the act. As his punishment he is "mummified alive," sealed inside a sarcophagus with scores of flesh-eating scarab beetles (which take their time in killing him). If his tomb is opened, and if he is brought back to life, he will "bring about a walking disease," and unleash the 10 proverbial plagues upon Egypt and the world. So wouldn't you know it, his tomb is opened inadvertently by some ugly American tourists.
Sometime in the 1920s, an American French foreign legionnaire named Rick O'Connell (Fraser) is fortunate to have an Egyptian scholar and librarian named Evelyn (Weisz), the plucky English woman, save him from being hung. She does so because he knows how to find the hidden city (having escaped from there once before) where the dead pharoahs are mummified and lots of gold is buried. He joins with her and her annoying brother Jonathan (Hannah) in their adventure, as fortune hunters, to find Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead.
Rick is one cool guy, with a self-deprecating sense of humor, with an unflappable personality, and with one eye for beauty and the other for battle: in other words, a man's man. His mission in this film is threefold: to rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, and save the world. He teams up with the infatuated Evelyn, who pines for him with bated breath and also earnestly digs being an expert in mummies. They race to the cursed city against other American fortune hunters and their lackey leading them there, who is named Beni (O' Connor). The heroine tells us that this lackey is so wormy a character that he will surely get his come-uppance by the time the film ends. There are also bands of mysterious, black-robed nomads, who have something to do with keeping tourists away from the lost city.The other so-called delights in this special effect and overlong film, are the gibberish messages read from the holy books, the one-liners coming off the lips of the characters faster than the bullets from their blazing guns, and all the free-spirited action scenes, that are non-stop, giving the film a lighter than lighthearted look to it. Excuse me, for not finding this nonsense film funny or even entertaining! After seeing mummies becoming undead and rising from the sand and enough gruesome killings to last me a few milleniums, all I can say is, Mummies!
REVIEWED ON 4/17/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
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