I always thought that mummies in movies were zombies with personality (they are the real talking dead). They can think, plot, and murder like man but take a beating like their undead movie brothers. But in "The Mummy," their characterizations are as thin as the rags they are wrapped in.
But none of that matters. Actually, the laws of physics, logic, and common-sense matter in a film like this one, the first in Universal's proposed "Dark Universe." It spends its introduction luring you in, lowering your guard only for it to grab onto that little kid in you and never let go. Well actually, looking at what other critics gave this movie, perhaps it was only me. So what? Is this a good film? Hell no, but did I like this film? I can't say for sure, but I was childishly happy throughout the entire run time.
The plot is a regurgitation of every other "mummy" incarnation on film, cannibalizing the genre and even its own franchise. Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) plays a thieving former Military something or other who is far too good-looking to believe he is sells priceless antiquities on the black market (his looks make him look like he is an actor. Perhaps a "movie-within-a-movie" would have been a better avenue). His buddy Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) are introduced to use in Iraq, where men with guns spot them, shoot guns only to be blown up by an air strike Chris called in for once the first bullet was fired. The strike unearth a prison tomb of Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), where Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) shows up and orders the sarcophagus to be airlifted out of the desert. Bad idea. Actually, if this film tells us anything, it is that Americans have no business in Iraq.
Nothing this film does is unique; it is a madcap tour of reused scenes and ideas from everything from 1979's "Zombi 2" (with the undead swimming underwater) to the films 1999 precursor "The Mummy" (with the lead mummy sucking the life out of tertiary characters). It is spectacularly stupid, but every actor here plays it completely straight, the film's biggest problem. Even Tom Cruise spends most of the movie looking aloof in front of a green screen. The lack of fresh ideas, or even one genuine scare, could have been saved by a wink or two from the cast.
But the title mummy herself, Princess Ahmanet, is a great movie villain, B-movie material carried by actress Sofia Boutella's wildly seductive performance. The film has a fetishistic obsession with her, lusting over her whether she is covered with rags with a chunk of her piercingly beautiful face removed or completely naked, the PG-13 rating remains thanks to convenient shadows her buttocks and breasts. She uses her sexuality to try and beguile Nick into letting her stab him with a sacred dagger to bring forth the Set, the deity who gave her her own powers explained in the prologue. Where as a less confident actress (or a more modest director) would have looked clumsy during these temptations (or shied away from them), Sofia goes all out to the point of hammy overacting. Perhaps she thought she was starring in those other "The Mummy" movies with Brendan Fraser. To say the mummy in "The Mummy" has no heart would be an insult; Egyptians often left the heart intact during mummification.
Action remains the picture's best feature, where fist-fights break up car chases in woodlands to zero-gravity airplane crashes. Oh sure, there is the occasional conversation, but most talking is done either zipping from one lavish set piece to then next, or with cuts to the mummy raising her army of the dead. It is all decidedly deliberate; it is almost as if the film knows no one cares, especially when script contains such flavorful dialogue as "She is real!" and "You can't run!" It is no coincidence that director Alex Kurtzman didn't know any better; his own writing credits include the trite film "Cowboys & Aliens" and the campy TV show "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys."
It is a shame how things take place in modern day; the plot concerns no technology outside of the invention of the parachute (oh wait, sorry, I think I saw a computer in one scene). There is no cloning, no space travels, nothing that calls for its present day backdrop. Here everything is about curses, old gods- things that beg for a period-piece setting. The previous trilogy used a wonder early 1900's background, where the luscious sets we're punctuated by vintage costumes, weapons, accents, and the likes. Here, everything outside of the tombs look like they could have been leftovers from other blockbusters.
Look, this four-star material reduced into a two-star film, but yet it gets three-stars? That is because for all the "cinematic universes" out there, I am just glad there wasn't a man in rubber tights running around. I had fun this time; it isn't as good as this years "Kong: Skull Island," but it is right up there with last summer's "Independence Day: Resurgence." If either of those movies make the adult in you cry for a film with craft and care, then "The Mummy" will not be able to find that little kid inside of you.
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