director/screenwriter
Stephen
Sommers
producers
Sean Daniel
James Jacks
cinematographer
Adrian Biddle
music
Jerry Goldsmith
editor
Bob Ducsay
cast
Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell)
Rachel Weisz (Evelyn Carnahan)
John Hannah (Jonathan)
Arnold Vosloo (Lord Imhotep)
Kevin J. O'Connor (Beni)
Oded Fehr (Ardeth Bay)
Patricia Velasquez (Anck Su Namun)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 124m
u.s.
release: May 7, 1999
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other stephen
sommers films
reviewed on this website:
- the
mummy returns
- van
helsing
|
With
most movies, you know within the first five minutes whether you're
in for a good time or a dreary evening. The Mummy begins
with an ancient-Egypt sequence that evokes The Ten Commandments,
only with female attire that pushes the PG-13 envelope, so I
knew we were on cheerful ground. Right off the bat, Jerry Goldsmith's
overcaffeinated score blasts us out of our seats, and we're treated
to murder, mutilation, and mummification even before the title
comes on. The Mummy has a loose, confident stride; it
revels in its own retro-ness, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Imagine the Spielberg of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the
Sam Raimi of Army
of Darkness, and you'll be somewhere in the ballpark.
The premise has been pop hokum for 67 years, since the original
1932 version starring Boris Karloff. That version, which Pauline
Kael appreciatively called "a bad dream of undying love,"
combined the then-recent "Curse of Tutankhamen" news
stories with elements of Universal's big hits of the previous
year, Dracula and Frankenstein. Karloff's mummy
Imhotep was smitten with a reincarnation of his lover from 3,000
years hence; the new mummy, played alternately by impressive
CG animation and Arnold Vosloo, isn't interested in the leading
lady romantically -- he wants to sacrifice her to resurrect his
dead tootsie. So much for undying love.
This Mummy avoids the beauty-and-the-beast story, a cliché
which by now has become older than Imhotep, and goes full steam
ahead. Brendan Fraser helps a lot; as Rick O'Connell, a cartoonishly
heroic adventurer, he's Indiana Jones for the jaded '90s (though
the movie's set in 1926). Rick always finds himself neck-deep
in marauding warriors or mummies (or both), which he then has
to shoot or slash his way through. Fraser is a likable and intelligent
presence, capably matched by British beauty Rachel Weisz as an
eager archivist named Evelyn, who, in one of my favorite moments,
gets drunk and declares, "I'm proud of who I am!
I am ... a librarian!"
Essentially, The Mummy is a comedy -- an outsize thrill
ride, loud and teeming with (generally) well-crafted effects
and scares. You have, of course, the obligatory scenes with the
heroes poking around in a dark tomb; since these are the only
quiet moments in the film, you just know something's about to
pounce, and it usually does. You have comic relief in the form
of Evelyn's fairly useless brother (John Hannah, of Sliding
Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral) and a cowardly,
backstabbing Arab named Beni (the scene-stealing Kevin J. O'Connor).
You have a wonderfully odd scene in which a blinded, de-tongued
victim of Imhotep appears to be having tea with the mummy and
his new friend Beni. You have ravishing eye candy in the form
of golden-tinged camerawork by ace cinematographer Adrian Biddle
(Thelma & Louise). You have the useful factoid that
cats scare off mummies -- as good a reason as any to keep Fluffy
around.
What you don't have, particularly, is a plot, but Stephen Sommers
(Deep Rising) has directed his own screenplay so briskly
that it hardly matters. Sommers doesn't toss in any needless
complications: The mummy wants the woman, and has to be stopped.
This is the basic plot of any adventure movie, by the way: The
bad guys want something valuable, and the good guys have to make
sure the bad guys don't get it. In this case, "it"
is the heroine. Sexist? Sure, but we're talking 1926. Like Spielberg's
Indiana Jones movies, The Mummy is a tongue-in-cheek
look at the sexual/racial politics and entertainment of a much
less PC era -- an homage to what we enjoyed as kids before we
were told why we shouldn't enjoy it. But what we enjoyed was
the spookiness and the seat-of-the-pants escapes, and the movie
has both to spare. On some level, no doubt, it's dumb and obvious,
but it's dumb and obvious in just the right ways. |
