An Interesting If Flawed Remake That's Marginally Better Than The Original

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2012)

It's taken me 13 years to watch this movie because, basically, I didn't like the original version! Of all the "classic" Universal horror movies, I thought 1932's "The Mummy" was the weakest. Aside from a great performance by Boris Karloff, it just wasn't that good. Universal knew how to make good horror movies, but what they so often did so right, they so totally failed at with "The Mummy." It wasn't exciting, it wasn't fun and it wasn't frightening. A horror movie, to be a horror movie, has to have at least one of those three things going for it. And, since remakes generally aren't as good as the original, I avoided this one like the plague until now. I'm pleasantly surprised, in that I actually thought this was marginally better than the 1932 version.
What went wrong in 1932 did not go wrong in 1999. This movie was exciting - it was packed with action and had some great effects. This movie was fun - it had a tongue in cheek quality to it, and the performances (especially from leads Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz) captured that tongue in cheek quality perfectly. And, at times at least, it was frightening. At least Imhotep was a ghastly, frightening being - not at all like the Imhotep of the original, who could have walked down the streets of Cairo with no one knowing who he was or thinking there was anything strange about him! So a lot of the problems were fixed, and made this pleasant watching.
It was not, however, without problems. Essentially, it went a bit overboard. In particular, the last half hour - featuring all of Imhotep's mummified and dessicated but re-animated priests was a little bit ridiculous, and I have to confess that the point at which they appeared was the point at which my attention started to wander. The opening, which featured a helpful journey back to ancient Egypt and explained how Imhotep got into this position, was also perhaps a wee bit too long, but it didn't cause me to wander. Those mummified priests in the last half hour didn't work for me.
When the last half hour of a movie causes you to lose a bit of interest - that's a problem. Overall, I enjoyed this, and I did think it marginally better than the original. For the 1932 version, I awarded a 5. Since this is - in my opinion - marginally better - 6/10.