WRAP IT UP
Cruise, ‘Mummy’ don’t stand test of time
When Boris Karloff played the ancient undead Egyptian prince Im-Ho-Tep in the 1932 horror classic “The Mummy,” he unwrapped a franchise that shows no signs of stopping.
Then again, the new 21st century “Mummy” with Tom Cruise is so terrible on so many levels, you can only hope this is really the end.
Unlike the hit Brendan Fraser “Mummy” trilogy of first-rate comic adventures that began in 1999 (and gave Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson a memorable film debut), this misbegotten, incoherent “Mummy” is a muddle of too much exposition, too many tired tropes from past Cruise movies and some of the worst plotting and dialogue this side of a creaky 1940s radio serial.
Not since Hugh Jackson's lamentable “Van Helsing,” another Universal horror, has a big-budget spawn of classic material been so botched.
Cruise is in his overly familiar guise as the hotshot morality-challenged military asset in the Middle East. His Nick is actually an antiques plunderer out for nobody but Nick.
After a lengthy prologue, Nick and his comic relief buddy Chris (Jake Johnson) discover an elaborate tomb in Iraq, and the military (led by impatient Courtney B. Vance) is called.
Also present: ancient Egyptian expert Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), blond, beautiful and 20-odd years younger than Nick. They've already shared an intimate night when he stole her archaeological map. The relationship is strained.
After some major mumbo jumbo and a ticking clock, the tomb, transported in a military plane, somehow crashes in London, unleashing all sorts of terror.
No one who made “The Mummy” could have guessed how creepy the film now seems depicting London under siege by an army of ghouls.
Here we meet Dr. Jekyll (portly Russell Crowe), who speaks in the plummiest of upper-class Brit accents and turns out to be possessed. With that name, is it a surprise he's a man taken over by a dark side?
Amid much gnashing of teeth, there's our unfortunate Mummy — poor, nearly naked Sofia Boutella is forced to snarl and snap her way through a role that is more potent prop than character. (“The Mummy” only seems endless.)