Mummies! Beetles! Sand! WooHoo!

Rating: 8/10 (6 September 2008)

The Plot: A librarian and her brother save a prisoner from an untimely death by recruiting him to help locate a fabled Egyptian tomb, and set off into the desert to find not only treasure, but a labyrinthine burial ground for a cursed Mummy who, in the course of the adventure, "accidentally" becomes resurrected and wreaks havoc on everyone with a fez, dress or gun.
The Pros: More than anything this film is very funny, especially if you pay attention to the witticisms in between the main dialog. Then there's the entertaining and very well done special effects (watch for the scenes with the mummy-induced sand-storms; pretty amazing stuff). The slapstick doesn't make for a very good horror film, but it does still manage to get it's "grossness-quotient" in with flesh eating beetles and soul-sucking rotting corpses (great effects again done to make the Mummy appear, well - "juicy", as they say in the movie). The acting is as good as it's going to get for a film of this genre, which in my opinion outshines even the Indiana Jones trilogy. Brendan Fraser is just plain perfect - delivering one uproarious line after the other - much more entertaining than Harrison Ford IMHO. Special nod to Rachel Weisz for being unexpectedly funny for what could have been a typical damsel-in-distress role. Check the memorable quotes section for sample dialog - good stuff!
The Cons: The Mummy Returns does not satisfy, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (The Mummy 3) is even worse, and the Scorpion King, which stole it's plot from The Mummy Returns, is worse than drinking bleach. On an empty stomach.
Great Scenes: Omid Djalili as Warden Gad Hassan who, about 45 minutes into the film, runs into the scene screaming and hands clasped atop his fez as beetles devour him alive. I've replayed this scene at least 20 times, and each time it just gets funnier and funnier.