As bad as it gets

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 1999)

I am frustrated. Frustrated that more movies like this will come out of Hollywood and reap in tons of money. It just makes me sad. The basic answer on a negative critique on "The Mummy" seems to be: "Hey, what did you expect? It's a fun movie." It's not. It's bad filmmaking at it's worst. It's not entertaining - and I was looking for shallow entertainment. It's not funny - the jokes are lame and the scenes that should've been serious are jokes too (which are also lame). The script doesn't even try to present a coherent or consistent plot - it's just a series of badly written, acted and directed scenes, held together by plot holes. Three days before I've seen "The Mummy", I started reading William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade" and I think it gives a really good overview of the inner workings of the American film industry. However, "The Mummy" told me more about Hollywood filmmaking (and the power of marketing and the average moviegoer) than this wonderful book - and it makes me sad.