I have lost track of the number of times that I have said: "If a studio refuses to send out a press kit before a movie opens, it is usually because there is SOMETHING FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG with the picture and the studio knows it." I won't bore you with ALL of the problems with The Mummy, but I must warn you that it is absolutely not "a horror film." It is a rip-off of Indiana Jones type action-adventure films. In fact, it is so much of a rip-off that at one point the Pawnbroker who is adventuring in "the lost city," says, "Bugs. Ugh. I hate 'em." See? He says "bugs," not "snakes," so this is a genuine new and original movie. A genuine, original BAD movie.
The modern story begins with a battle scene that makes no sense whatsoever, with mounted Arabs fighting . . . somebody -- who, we are not told, nor why. Brendan Fraser, the only "European" among the swarthy defenders, wears a French Foreign Legion patch and later says that his men marched "half-way across Libya" to to get to the site of some famous "lost city." Perhaps Fraser was leading an expedition of the Italian Foreign Legion into British-ruled Egypt. (Did Italy even have a Foreign Legion in the '20s?)
As just a single example of the sloppiness behind this movie, consider the "holy grail" which the lady archaeologist/obligatory love interest is seeking: The Book of Amun-Ra. To get to it, though, the mob of people at the "lost city" have to first discover The Book of the Dead, which is big and black and bound in dark metal. Oooh, really scary! However, as anyone who has ever been to a good-sized library or bookstore or museum exhibit on Egypt knows, "The Book of the Dead" is not only not lost, it has been in print continuously for almost a hundred years, most recently in a glossy, color-illustrated "coffee table book." (Actually, it is not even properly called "The Book of the Dead" -- it was buried with the dead to help them in the afterlife, not unlike the practice of burying someone with a Bible clasped in the hands. Its real title is The Book of Coming Forth By Day, which, for my money is a much scarier title in a film about undead thingies!)
The Book of Amun-Ra is a big, shiny tome, about the size of an unabridged English dictionary, and supposedly made from solid gold . . . which means that it should be much too heavy for the lady archaeologist/obligatory love interest to even lift, but people trot around with it as if it were so much Styrofoam™ (which it probably was).
Among the eighty or so people who are traipsing through "the lost city," the lady archaeologist/obligatory love interest and her brother have "The Key" (with capital letters, thank you, very much), which is that puzzle box seen in the trailers and commercials and is the only thing which can unlock The Book of the Dead, and The Book of Amun-Ra, which, if I was following the loose bantering about of dates correctly, is a thousand years older. Same key for two books made a thousand years apart. And it looks like the puzzle box in the Hellraiser movies. Go figure.
Those are the obviously ludicrous parts about the two books. What most audience members probably won't realize, unless they have studied Bible History , or Library Science, or Archaeology, (or watched anything about these subjects on the Arts & Entertainment or Discovery or History Channels), or who have seen any of the original Universal "Mummy" films, is that the ancient Egyptians did not use "books," as we know them -- they used scrolls.
Our modern style book (the "codex" format) was invented in Pergamon (in modern Turkey), home of that King Mausolus whose tomb, The Mausoleum, was one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. When the Egyptians banned the export of papyrus (from which scrolls were made), the Pergamenes resorted to using thinned sheep hides and "parchement" was invented. Parchment being stiff, it can't be rolled into a scroll and must be bound layer upon layer into the "codex" form that we know today. Diplomas are traditionally printed on "sheep skins," which seem to have either escaped or else fallen far too easily into the hands of the makers of this version of The Mummy.
As for the ridiculous "lost city," its whereabouts seem to be known to everybody except real archaeologists. If Mr. Krok had been around, he probably would have opened a McDonald's restaurant for all of the treasure hunters, guardians, and miscellaneous riff-raff wandering around. As for the Pawnbroker . . . don't ask.
If you want to see a good action-adventure film, rent The Rugrats Movie and use the money you'll save to buy your Phantom Menace tickets! Rating: W5: Worth $5.00 and not one cent more.
