A waste of good special effects...

Rating: 3/10 (20 April 2000)

I remember seeing the previews for this movie, and never once was there any indication how silly it was. The previews indicated only the promise of great special effects and a good horror movie. There was something about what people were saying (or not saying) that made me wait. Now I know what it was. This version of The Mummy didn't take itself seriously enough to be classified as a horror movie. I just cannot understand why anyone would want to produce such fluff when it could have been so much more. The special effects were great, but they seemed completely out of place every time yet another moment of levity was introduced.
The IMDB genre for The Mummy is Adventure/Action/Thriller/Horror. This film takes itself so unseriously that it qualifies itself as none of those. Every great special effect and piece of cinematography is ruined by the silly dialogue. This film could have been a classic, but instead it was ruined by its ridiculous tendency to insert a silly piece of slapstick or dialogue every chance it had.
I suppose that is why I disliked this film so much. It's not what the film was, it's what the film wasn't that I can't get over. Had the cast been given a serious script, the mood of the film would have seemed right, and I could have truly gotten into it. Instead, every time I even started to try to immerse myself, it got silly and ruined it for me.
I cannot imagine why anyone I know would look forward to a sequel to this film. It's possible to interject humour in any movie genre without ruining the overall mood and feel. This film seemed to go out of its way to shoot itself in the foot every chance it got.