Review of The Mummy (1999) by Stuart M — 20 Jun 2017

Sure, it's an obvious Indiana Jones knockoff, but it's a GOOD Indiana Jones knockoff with a style of its own and a more horror-based kick. The film's got more of an epic quest feel to it than Indy, and does a good job merging genres. Brendan Fraser's really excellent as Rick O'Connell, who's tough and brave but also a bit silly. Rachel Weisz is equally impressive as Evelyn, who's serious and naive but super smart and competent. Merge the two together and you have something like Indy, but having the two elements of his soul at odds with each other makes for some good drama. And the comic relief brother Jonathan is really great. Unlike Indy, the villain is supernatural, and this allows for some truly one-sided escapades and scary scenes. And no Nazis in sight!

The archaeological scenes in this film are really played up well. When you think about it, Jones doesn't actually do much excavating, but here we spend half the movie hunting for treasure and then investigating it. Pacing is near perfect. At no stage does the film overstay its welcome and just when you're starting to tire of one plotline the film switches focus to another. Seriously: war movie to investigation of a mysterious artifact to race to excavation to mummy attack to apocalypse to counter-attack. Each leads logically to the next while being interesting on its own. The movie is fast paced and doesn't dither.

The CGI is probably the most dated part of the film. It hasn't always hung up well. But even as an obviously CGI creation, the Mummy's pretty scary. The design is cool and inhuman enough to work regardless of how plasticky it looks, and the fact that it's frequently portrayed in the shadows helps. It's not a monstrosity like the Scorpion King. The sand face still impresses after all these years. In general, while it's obviously fake, the film still looks good. And a good adventure can help you forget about questionable effects anyway.