Mindless entertainment, just what the doctor ordered

Rating: Null/10 (10 May 1999)

"The Mummy" kicks off the summer movie season with a bang, and it is everything you would expect from a Hollywood summer blockbuster: big, loud, expensive, and not a shred of intelligence. Not that that's always bad thing.
"The Mummy" combines the plotlines from the "Indiana Jones" movies with all the typical horror movie cliches. You get five people pitted against the most awsome and supreme power in the universe, and do they stand a chance? Even without seeing the movie you can answer that. In terms of being a horror movie, it delivers a few good scares and some genuinely skin-crawling moments (especially if you are afraid of bugs).
The story starts in ancient Egypt, where the lover of the pharoah's wife is put to an extremely nasty death. Three thousand years later, a group of scholars go out in search of "The Book of the Dead", which is hidden under the lost city dubbed the "City of the Dead". They employ the help of a convict (Brendan Fraser) who has been there before. Big suprise, they have some competition. A group of American treasure hunters (looters, actually) are also looking for the lost city. Well, they find the book and unwittingly bring the dead mummy to life, and he goes out into the world to regenerate and to resurrect his long-dead mistress. If he succeeds, the world is doomed.
This movie is standard action/adventure, the script is weak, the overacting is painfully obvious, and the attempts at humor wash over you after the first 30 minutes. But not that you'd notice, there is enough special effects here to distract anyone from the films technical weaknesses. But I have to admit, it was entertaining. The Mummy's rotting corpse in the glow of the moonlight is enough the scare the hell out of anyone.
It is one of those movies you can only see on the big screen, but it is not a movie I'll be seeing again.