a look back 18 years later on Stephen Sommers' big stab at Hollywood escapism

Rating: 6/10 (7 June 2017)

This movie is like if you take Raiders of the Lost Ark (and other Indiana Jones movies in general, those serial-tropes) and deduct like 10,000 IQ points from it. It's *so* Raiders, but it's also still, in being true to the original 1932 film, still SO Dracula- rip-off in some ways, even down to Kevin J O'Connor (OH MY GOD NOT- HENRY_PLAINVIEW from TWWB!) playing Renfield to Arnold Vosloo's Imhotep (though Renfield crossed with Alfred Molina from Raiders- did I mention this is RAIDERS with like a lot of dumbness injected in?) It's a slam-bang action movie where half of the dialog are full-on *Movie* lines. You know the ones?
This is where characters, especially Brendan Fraser (who, honestly, is having the time of his life in this role), spout off a lot of clichés - Rick makes sure to say "We're in deep trouble" more than once, or to be ready with a line while being tossed conveniently across the room of the inside of a pyramid. And characters just do dumb thing after dumb thing, or characters appear where they shouldn't but hey gotta advance the plot... like the whole entire group of dumb American cowboys(!?) who manage to make it off of the boat that catches on fire and while we get scenic views of Fraser and Weisz and her brother going across the desert, the rest are not to be seen... until convenient.
Oh, Rachel Weisz, by the way, is a great thing about this movie. Really, she's the one who practically got a career off of this movie, and she is so incredibly charming and dorky (the scene where she gets drunk is a different kind of drunk scene than we get in Raiders with Marion, I should note). She may be a "Damsel" occasionally in distress, but she is acting Evelyn on a wavelength that gives the movie an energy and delight that helps to balance out all of the stock actors and characters surrounding her (even O'Connor, who is giving this one- note weasel his all, is that). She and Fraser have the kind of old-time Hollywood chemistry, with enough modernity, that makes the movie watchable even as it gets so.... so.... so.... so... so dumb.
And yet... it's entertaining. It's occasionally cheesy and haphazard - my God, does that climax where every single thing seems to come alive, usually by mistake - and I neglect to note how, despite being from old Egyptian lore (even if that's lore taken from older movies and serials), it also borrows in one giant chunk from the Evil Dead. But... well, I kept watching and not simply because I had to for an upcoming podcast.
PS: Spoiler -
about O'Connor's Beni... near the end, they really didn't know what to do with him, did they? I mean the writers; he's about ready to escape on the camel, he has a good amount of gold after getting away with being a conniving creep... but he sticks around and goes back inside, and as soon as he does we know exactly what's coming for him. The movie also goes the extra step of showing us how he meets his maker. It feels oddly cruel though, despite how slimy he's been. I almost felt sorry for him or even something close to sympathy. Isn't it enough to assume he's squashed with everything else inside the pyramid once it collapses? Like anything else here, it's overkill.