The Mummy

Let the Popcorn Movie Season begin, so sayeth Stephen Sommers, writer and director of The Mummy. He got $80 million of Universal’s money (seven times more than his last movie, Deep Rising, even took in at the box office) and put together a cheesy, corny, and very fun, popcorn movie. Shut the mind off and enjoy, if you can.

The opening sequence explains the story of Imhotep, who was daring enough to have an affair with the pharaoh’s mistress, who was not to be even touched by another man. They punish him by placing the biggest darkest curse the Egyptians have, one they’re so afraid of they’ve never used it before. But since Imhotep is considered an all around bad dude, they felt he deserved it. He was mummified alive, severed tongue and all (note to anyone with kids under 13: this movie is incredibly violent. They must have greased a few palms at the MPAA ratings board to get a PG-13 rating), and encased him with a bunch of rather nasty flesh eating beetles. If for any reason Imhotep were to be awoken, well, all hell would break loose, literally.

Fast-forward three thousand years, where Hamunaptra, city of the dead and the burial spot of Imhotep, has become a fabled but never discovered place where untold riches of the Egyptians were buried. We meet a clumsy librarian (there doesn’t seem to be any other kind in the movies, it seems. Sorry, Ali) named Evelyn (the fetching Rachel Weisz, Keanu’s love interest in Chain Reaction) whose petty thief brother (John Hannah, who delivered that heartbreaking eulogy in Four Weddings and a Funeral) snagged a very interesting piece from a foreign legionnaire. Inside the piece is a map, which details the whereabouts and design of Hamunaptra. They visit the legionnaire (a very buff Brendan Fraser) in prison to ask him about it (they didn’t do a good job explaining why he was in prison and about to be hanged, but oh well…). When he tells Evelyn that he’s seen Hamunaptra, she asks the warden to pardon him in exchange for a percentage of whatever goods they find. On the way, they stumble upon another group of American treasure hunters (of course, they all sound like they’re from Texas) and off they all go to see who can find the most stuff. And boy, do they find stuff. Shiny gold stuff, and slime covered death stuff. And oh yeah, Imhotep is rather bitter about his punishment all those years ago.

This is Indiana Jones as interpreted by Sam Raimi and Robert Rogriduez. The battle sequences owe a tremendous debt to Raimi’s Evil Dead series, and Sommers’ showcasing the Mummy’s strength by punching people across the room is straight out of the Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn) bag of tricks. Like both of those directors’ best work, this also revels in the silly. This is not a movie to be taken seriously. It’s a thrill ride, with dazzling special effects, though it wasn’t quite as scary as I hoped it would be. They also blew what I expected to be a plot piece with cats, guardians of the underworld. Perhaps that part wound up on the cutting room floor, but it made the end result a little choppy.

Brendan Fraser has certainly shown the world he is more than Encino Man, even with a part as throwaway as this. I expect him to get vaulted to the A-list and to get many offers for action movie vehicles (though I also expect him to turn most or all of them down). Weisz is rather affecting as the damsel in distress, and while she’s very useful in reading the Egyptian tablets and the book of the Dead, she’s still essentially a token female. Still, this is part will do for her what I’m sure she hoped Chain Reaction would do back in 1996 (the only problem then was that movie really sucked). I wasn’t all that amused with Hannah’s character, though he did pull a stunt that was for me the funniest bit in the movie. Arnold Vosloo plays the Mummy (with skin), and he’s actually a lot more menacing as a corpse, as you can imagine. He also looked like a mix between Billy Zane and Jaye Davidson from Stargate, without the pierced nipples, of course.

In the end, The Mummy was exactly what I expected it to be, and because of that I wasn’t disappointed. Anyone looking for anything more than fluff will probably hate this. Frame of mind is everything with seeing a movie like this. This isn’t a good movie by any means, but it is an enjoyable one. If you can’t get in to see The Phantom Menace in a couple weeks, this is a pleasant alternative.