Entertaining viewing for anyone looking for pure entertainment

Rating: 6/10 (10 December 2007)

In Ancient Egypt the Pharaoh Seti I is murdered by his mistress, Anck-su-Namun, and her lover, Imhotep. For his part in the crime Imhotep is sentenced to be "mummified alive". (It is not explained exactly how this is carried out, but as the vital organs were always removed as a necessary initial step in the mummification process, keeping the subject alive throughout must have been quite tricky).
Fast-forward to the 1920s. Rick O'Connell, an American serving with the French Foreign Legion, and Evelyn Carnahan, a half-British half-Egyptian librarian and expert Egyptologist, are on a quest to find the lost city of Hamunaptra. (Rick appears to be serving with the Legion in Egypt itself, even though in the 1920s the country was under British rule. The nearest French troops would have been in Syria). Unfortunately, they inadvertently disturb the corpse of Imhotep, which proves to be a mistake. Apparently, reanimating someone who has been mummified alive can have all sorts of dire consequences for the world, such as unleashing the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Rick and Evelyn, together with her inept and cowardly brother Jonathan, have to try and undo the harm they have unwittingly caused. In this task they have the assistance of the Medji, a tribe of desert nomads descended from the bodyguards of the murdered Pharaoh, who have for three millennia acted as the guardians of the lost city.
As one might guess from the above synopsis, this is not a serious or realistic film. It is an adventure story with supernatural elements in the tradition of Rider Haggard's "She", and obviously influenced by Spielberg's Indiana Jones films, themselves influenced by the old Saturday morning serials. It was to be followed two years later by a sequel, "The Mummy Returns", which charts the adventures of Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan ten years later. (By 1935 Rick and Evelyn are married and have a young son, Alex).
The earlier film's main claim to fame is that it made a big international star of the lovely Rachel Weisz. Prior to 1999, apart from the moderately good but unremarkable American thriller "Chain Reaction", she was best-known as the star of British art-house movies. "The Mummy" established her as a Hollywood name. Perhaps this change in her status influenced the way she appears in the two films. In "The Mummy" Evelyn is portrayed as intelligent but rather dowdy, hiding her good looks behind thick spectacles, and clumsy. (In one memorable scene she manages to demolish an entire library). Given that ten years are supposed to pass between "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns", she should by the time of the later film have matured into a respectable matron in her late thirties. Instead, she is played as a sexy vamp, especially in her duel with Patricia Velazquez, and actually looks younger rather than ten years older. British art-house actresses might look dowdy, but not Hollywood superstars.
"The Mummy" is perhaps overlong and the pace sometimes flags, especially during the first half. ("The Mummy Returns", which has an even more incredible and convoluted plot, manages to keep the interest rather better). There is, of course, nothing of any deep significance about it, but it does make for entertaining viewing for anyone in the mood for pure entertainment. 6/10