The Mummy (no stars)
rated PG-13 Universal Pictures starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Jonathan Hyde, Stephen Dunham written and directed by Stephen Sommers
I am a movie critic; that much is obvious. But moreso, I consider myself a movie lover. Sometimes, in an awful movie, my friends will beg me to leave the theatre halfway through the film. But I always stay, hoping that a good ending can save the otherwise horrible movie. But two-thirds of the way through the painfully bad The Mummy, I realized there was no hope, and my more-than-willing friend and I left the theatre then and there.
We walked through the campus of UCLA at midnight, and talked to the fans waiting in line to get tickets to the new "Star Wars" movie. We watched "L.A. Confidential" with them and waited for a cab. When we got in the cab, the driver asked, "So, what did you do tonight?" "We saw a bad movie," I answered. "The Mummy?" he asked. He explained that the night before he had driven home people who felt as if they witnessed a disaster by watching the movie. Enough said.
Brendan Fraser, whom I was just beginning to like, stars as Rick O'Connell, a foreign soldier fighting in 1920's Egypt. He is fighting for the lost city of Hammenabtra, known as the city of the dead. Many years before, a man (Arnold Vosloo) had been mummified with a powerful curse that would infect anyone who came into contact with him.
Anyway, Rick, a librarian named Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), and her brother (John Hannah), go back to Hammenabtra to find ancient artifacts worth millions. What they end up doing is waking the mummy, and trying to stop him.
Going through all the problems of The Mummy would waste a lot of precious time, so I'll just point out something that really pissed me off. Director Stephen Sommers (Deep Rising) calls his film a "sweeping, desert epic", and he is so visually derivative of The English Patient in a couple scenes that I almost wanted to scream. If only Sommers could have made his plot and characters a litle bit more like the characters in The English Patient...
Universal Pictures is supposedly in need of a hit after notable flops like Babe: Pig In The City, Meet Joe Black, and EdTV, but I think that bad word of mouth will cut The Mummy off after a large opening weekend. The film should do little to hamper Brendan Fraser's rising stardom, but I'd like to see him choose more good roles like Gods and Monsters or School Ties.
I feel as if I've wasted to much time on this review when I only need to prove one point: The Mummy is crap on a reel.
a review by Akiva Gottlieb akiva@excite.com http://www.angelfire.com/mo/film watch me on TBS' "Dinner And A Movie" May 21, 8:05pm EST
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