Oh the Summer of ‘99. I was 19, carefree, and working for a movie theater. I saw all the summer blockbusters. One of which, that I was particularly wowed by, was The Mummy. I remember walking out of the theater with the boy I was dating at the time, just in awe over Brendan Fraser and his Indiana Jones type character. The boy I dated at the time, however, was far from wowed. He said the original was better, and that he never saw such crap in his life. I thought he was crazy…
At least until I actually grew up. It’s been almost 10 years since I saw the movie in the theaters, and remembering what a good time I had, and how mild it seemed (yet with what I felt was a wonderful bit of horror and suspense), decided to let my 6 year old watch it with me one night. Yeah, in doing this, I made two mistakes.
First mistake: the mummies appear too real for my particular child to handle. He clung to my arm like a drowning man to a raft and I had to continually tell him nothing was real. Now, as I write this, I have to keep putting him back to bed and telling him it’s not real. He did seem to enjoy it though… so at least one of us did.
Before I go into the second mistake I made in watching this film, I should give a bit of a synopsis: Basically put, back in ancient Egypt (1290 BC) the Pharaoh‘s high priest (named Imhotep) fornicated with the his mistress, and the two conspired to kill him. After succeeding in his murder, The Pharaoh’s mistress (named Anck Su Namun) took the fall and killed herself under the belief her boyfriend the Priest could raise her from the dead. So, when Imhotep tries to revive his beloved… He was caught and forced to endure the Homdi, the worst of all the ancient curses, and is buried under Anubis in Hamunaptra. Then in 1923, something close to 3000 years later, an American by the name of Rick O’Connell stumbled onto the tomb with the French Legion and nearly lost his life. Sometime later, a brother/sister team saves his life so he can lead them to Hamunaptra. While there, they discover the living remains of Imhotep, read from the book of the dead, and sent the Mummy’s curse over the Earth. Who said there wasn’t any harm in reading a book?
So, on to my second mistake, as real as everything appeared to my son, it was all completely CGI to me. The plot’s ridiculous, the story has massive holes, and… well… the only good thing about it is Brendan Fraser. Not his acting… just how he looks. Something about a rugged man always seems to hit my soft spot. Though he’s easy on the eyes, he can’t carry a crap film all by himself. Perfect example? Encino Man.
The whole thing is obvious Hollywood silly. It’s overly dramatic to the max. Everyone seems to over act in a new sense. Not the Shatner sense… but yeah, it’s obvious they are trying to turn something laughable into something serious. It’s a sad thing to watch. They have gone CGI crazy with this, most likely because CGI had first come through. It’s all over sensationalized, with the over the top effects. At one point the old fighter pilot dies after going down in a sand storm and the sand slowly swallows him and the plane up. Is there quicksand in the desert? Something tells me that’s not so… but I could be wrong. It’s laughable, the whole thing.
In short, this is a piece of crap. Yeah, that’s all that can be said about that.
Sequel: The Mummy Returns
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