‘THE MUMMY’ UNRAVELS QUICKLY
‘Mummy’ re-creators miss opportunity to introduce original ideas
She’s Mummy Dearest — the first female pharaoh featured in a film franchise’s fabled history — a femme who’s fatale in more ways than one.
Eighteen years after the 1999 remake and 85 years after the 1932 original, director Alex Kurtzman’s yarn is set in Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization, better known nowadays as Iraq, where the destruction of priceless antiquities around Mosul is rampant in an ongoing brutal war.
Nick (Tom Cruise) and his sidekick Jake (Chris Vail) call themselves “long-range reconnaissance team” members and liberators. Or are they just mercenary looters and sellers of precious relics? Egyptologist Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) thinks the latter.
A big face is discovered in a big pit which, when excavated, reveals the grand underground tomb of ancient princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), whose destiny was denied her. She and her malnourished malevolence over the millennia are awakened by Nick — henceforth her “chosen one.” She’s got big plans for him, and “terrors that defy human comprehension” for everyone else.
The defying of human comprehension (if nothing else) is certain in this film. It includes a massive spider attack and subsequent rat attack, plus a nifty helicopter rescue and plane crash involving Ahmanet’s coterie of ravens, who (n)evermore attack Nick.
Baltimore should only have such an offense.
It’s the movie’s one and only good use of 3-D, otherwise a totally unnecessary and irrelevant tool.
David Koepp and Christopher McQuarrie are two names you should remember to forget. They authored the mindlessly absurd screenplay, recycling a plot that’s older than the pyramids: Foolish adventurers disturb ancient evil, which is very cranky and wreaks havoc on everybody when reawakened. Waking up, too, are Crusader zombies in England, who unleash glass explosions in the British Museum that escalate into the entire destruction of London.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think all this preposterous mumbo-jumbo was a parody on the order of “We Want Our Mummy,” in which the Three Stooges’ go to Egypt in search of King Rootin-Tootin, for whose mummy there’s a $5,000 prize. Inside the tomb, they run into villains on a search for jewels buried inside the mummy — which Curly accidentally destroys. Moe and Larry then wrap Curly in bandages to fool the bad guys. Turns out that the mummy Curly destroyed wasn’t the King but rather his wife, Queen Hatsi-Tatsi — and that Rootin-Tootin was a midget.
Why am I telling you the plot of a 1939 short that cost maybe $5,000 to make? Because it’s better, more fun and far more original than that of the $125 million extravaganza at hand. The only original thing here is a bizarre UNDERWATER zombie chase sequence — something not even George Romero thought to attempt — which may lead to a new Olympic “Synchronized Zombie Swimming” category in the future.
Mr. Cruise looks good for his age and does his best, I suppose, in a tough gig.
Jake Johnson, as the comic sidekick Chris Vail, is as unfunny as he is undead.
What do Russell Crowe, Michael Jackson and Dr. Strangelove have in common? They all wear one glove, for no apparent reason.
Ms. Boutella as Ahmet, with her facial hieroglyph tats, is very beautiful, despite the missing nostril and hole in the left side of her face. She has to eat faces in order to replenish her own flesh and blood, and endure a kind of mercury enema or embalming treatment, while chained up. But the film’s one great visual image is her TWO PUPILS — by which I mean, not a pair of students, but the double irises in her eyes.
Let’s be blunt: The whole and sole point of this thing is money, and the cynical calculation thereof. Universal is the erstwhile reigning studio of horror films, from “Dracula” (1931) and “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) down through the decades. Mr. Crowe in his incomprehensible Jekyll/ Hyde role here is a shameless setup to introduce him and that dual character for a forthcoming stand-alone film in a (hopedfor) new Universal “Dark Universe” series.
Oy, veh. A dreadful pastiche of tried-and-false devices from the Indiana Jones, Dracula, Living Dead, Fast & Furious franchises — with a little Lawrence of Arabia.
This is one mummy they should’ve left under wraps, my female companion observed.
My male companion was a little more generous: “It’s OK — if you’ve never seen a movie before.”