Arts & Entertainment : Friday, May 07, 1999
'Mummy' is cursed: Horror remake stumbles through weak script, directing
by Keith Simanton
Special to The Seattle Times
A vital, final step in the mummification process is explained in "The Mummy." The sacred temple priests would take a hot poker, shove it up the nose, scramble the entire contents of the skull into jelly, and then suck the brain out through the nostril. Ironically, that's a lot like watching the movie.
| Movie review Rating: ** "The Mummy," with Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Harrah. Written and directed by Stephen Sommers. 126 Minutes. Several theaters. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of pervasive adventure violence and partial nudity. |
Believe me, I wanted to like this film. I'd seen those rousing previews that gave hints at an action-adventure in the mold of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." What's on screen, however, smacks more of "Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold." It has tenuous connections to the original "Mummy," the poky Boris Karloff psychosexual classic of 1932, but none of that film's fusty elegance.
This version starts with a lengthy exposition detailing just how the title character, Pharaoh's high priest, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), was buried alive for attempting to resurrect his dead lover, Anck-Su-Namun. In one of the first headscratchers of logic in this film, the narrator explains that additionally, if Imhotep is disturbed, that he will become "an unholy flesh eater" and have the power of the gods, including the power to bring on plagues. Seems like the ancient Egyptians might have wanted to leave that "omniscient power" clause out of their eternal punishment judgment but, hey, times change.
Flash forward 3,000 years. Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser), Evelyn Carnarvon (Rachel Weisz) and her brother, Jonathan (John Hannah), have banded together to find the lost, evil city of Hamunaptra. Also on the hunt is a team of ugly Americans and their guides. Both teams break into the tomb and then spend a few days plundering as members of their company mysteriously disappear.
Watching these thieves ransack the tombs is bothersome. Nowhere is there the impassioned voice of an archeologist or paleontologist discussing history and antiquities (remember Belloq's great "watch" speech in "Raiders"?). These cookie-jar morons just want to break into the next chamber and crack that next seal.
"Are you sure we can find the secret compartment thing?" O'Connell asks. This is the genius who found the lost city of Hamunaptra?
Once Imhotep gets released he begins to assimilate the bodies of those who freed him and he unleashes seven of the 10 plagues of Exodus. How Imhotep got into that second bag of tricks is never explained either, but it provides some of the more enjoyable moments in this effects-laden extravaganza. In fact, the amazing effects are finally the only reason to see this disappointing slip up, and may actually justify it.
Blame, perhaps even a curse, can be leveled on writer/director Stephen Sommers. He's a grand set designer, and creates a grand scope, but he peoples it with an amazingly vapid cartoon assemblage of characters. He's inflicted each one with situational idiocy. One moment Jonathan has never heard of Seti, the pharaoh of the 19th dynasty, yet he knows all about Hamunaptra and quotes Exodus verbatim.
Worst of all, Sommers is so tone deaf in his decisions to mix horror and comedy that this becomes a principal construction. Scary moment, comedy moment. Scary moment, comedy moment. It doesn't matter if it's inappropriate or not, that joke is just brewing beneath the surface of every scene.
"The Mummy" is a resounding disappointment, perhaps most of all because the filmmakers attempted to make something many want to see: an entertaining action adventure for most of the family (the gore is a bit much - hence the PG-13). They went for the right milieu, but they missed it by a mile.
