Review of The Mummy (2017) by Patrick L — 20 Oct 2017

"A spectacular sandstorm of suck. Looking at an hourglass for two hours would be more enjoyable than sitting through this bloated mess again.".

Movie Review: The Mummy.

Date Viewed: June 10 2017.

Directed By Alex Kurtzman (People Like Us).

Screenplay By David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman, Story By Jon Spaihts, Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet.

Starring: Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Courtney B. Vance, Jake Johnson, Marwan Kenzari and Russell Crowe.

Over the past 30 years, Tom Cruise has been running, jumping and shouting in major blockbuster movies. Sure, I would like to see a change in his career but I didn't mean this type of change. What was he thinking of when he and Universal decided to unwrap and reboot it's "Mummy" franchise? "The Mummy" is proposing to start a cinematic universe in the veins of Universal's classic movie monsters. The studio has big plans ahead for their "Dark Universe", their planning an "Invisible Man" film starring Johnny Depp and a "Bride of Frankenstein" film with Javier Bardem but with one movie in, this universe seems certain to go down in flames.

I haven't seen the classic 1932 "Mummy" with Boris Karloff but it looked like "Citizen Kane" compared to this. 67 years later, Universal revamped the franchise in 1999 with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz and it had more of an Indiana Jones spirit to it than the original classic. It might've been goofy but at least it was kind of fun but then came 2001's "The Mummy Returns", the 2002 cheesy spin-off "The Scorpion King" with Dwayne Johnson and "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" which contained even more cheese. You want to know why Universal decided not to bring Fraser back for the new film? That's because his career got murdered by angry animals when he did "Furry Vengeance".

When I heard Tom Cruise was taking over the franchise, I had some hope that it might click but believe it or not, this rebooted, gender-swapped "Mummy" is actually even worse than the previous "Mummy" features. With Disney having the Marvel Universe and Warner Bros. having the DC Universe, Universal executives must've panicked and said "We got to get ourselves one of these cinematic universes as well!". I'm sorry but without any character development, scares, thrills, fun or even a sense of adventure, "The Mummy" is just a spectacular sandstorm of suck.

Cruise plays Nick Morton, a soldier of fortune and treasure hustler who finds a mysterious tomb somewhere in present-day, war-torn Iraq. After getting the traditional Iraq welcome from ISIS insurgents, Nick and his partner, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) miraculously uncover the lost tomb of an ancient princess named Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella, from "Kingsman" and "Star Trek Beyond") but Nick gets angry responses from a hot-headed colonel named Greenway (Courtney B. Vance) and a pretty female archeologist, Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) who previously had a romantic past with Nick. First off, Wallis' character is all wrong because staying pretty and having big brains doesn't turn you into a defining character.

Nick and Chris are hoping to find treasure and sell it into the black market but Jenny discovers that the tomb is actually a prison and Nick unearths the tomb. Oh yeah, Chris also gets bitten by a camel spider but that's okay because Nick thinks that these spiders aren't harmful but come on, if some dangerous insects have been living in an ancient tomb for thousands of years, they're always going to be dangerous. Nick, Chris and Jenny place Ahmanet's sarcophagus on a military plane and they're off to England but chaos ensues when Chris kills Greenway and he attempts to attack the crew but Nick is forced to shoot him.

Suddenly, a flock of crows attack the plane and it starts to go down. Jenny manages to escape by parachuting her way out but everyone else on board were not so lucky. However, Nick awakens at a morgue and is shocked to find himself still breathing. How could Nick survive such a horrific plane crash? He's still alive because he was chosen by Ahmanet to house Set, the god of death. Ahmanet just needs to stab him with her special dagger and she can give Set a physical human form to live in. Ahmanet was on course to be Egypt's next queen but her father stripped away her birthright by having a new baby boy with his second wife. Ahmanet became angry and her thirst for power grew so she sold her soul to Set and she slaughtered her family. Ahmanet attempted to transfer Set's spirit into another human body but her father's priests stopped the ritual from happening and they mummified her for eternity. As Nick and Jenny figure a way to outrun and possibly stop the Mummy, the spirit of Chris still lives and he warns Nick you can't run from Ahmanet and that she has plans for him. What plans is he referring to? Does she really want to become Cruise's next scientologist wife? Come on guys, this joke is better than the humor this big-budget fiasco is putting out.

Meanwhile, Russell Crowe shows up as Dr. Henry Jekyll and his mean alter ego Hyde for no apparent reason other than to set the stage for the upcoming ten installments of this "Dark Universe" and to have a duel with Cruise because yeah, you always wanted to see Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe duke it out for the world of gods and monsters. Annabelle Wallis is completely bland here as the pretty archeologist, Sofia Boutella isn't the least bit scary or interesting as the Mummy who gets a supporting role in her own movie, Crowe is clearly hamming it up as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Cruise is way out of his element here. Cruise's Nick Morton is essentially every Tom Cruise character known to man, he's the arrogant prick who's always looking after himself instead of helping others but when he has to deal with a terrible curse, he redeems himself by becoming a hero.

Director and co-writer Alex Kurtzman (People Like Us, Mission: Impossible III, the first two "Transformers" films and The Island) throws everything us from breaking glass, an ambulance chase, the plane crash sequence, undead minions who look like zombies and London being half-destroyed by a supernatural, power-craving mummy but this movie is dauntingly relentless in terms of its pacing and editing. The screenplay which was conceived by six people (David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman, Jon Spaihts, Jenny Lumet and Kurtzman) has little to no narrative and is beyond incoherent.

Most of the action is repetitive, the Easter eggs in this film are so banal and obvious and the spirit ritual scene in the prologue mostly seems like an excuse to show off Boutella's smoking-hot body and yes, they even show her bare ass. Sexism in Hollywood these days never fails to amaze me. Only the plane crash sequence seems worth the price of admission alone but two minutes of amazing choreographed action doesn't excuse "The Mummy" for being the dumbest, air-sucking summer movie I've seen in quite some time.

Looking at an hourglass for two hours would be more enjoyable than sitting through this bloated mess again.