What a waste of two hours...

Rating: 2/10 (8 May 1999)

This movie is just a shame. Nothing about it is even remotely entertaining. It's not scary, and it's not even campy enough to be funny in an Anaconda-esque way. The writing and directing are fit for a straight-to-video flick, yet for some reason millions of dollars were fed to this loser. Somehow, even the expensive sets, costumes and ILM computer effects seem low-rent. So what killed this flick? Maybe it's the characters, one of whom knows how to read heiroglyphics, studies ancient Egyptian cities, memorizes mummy's curses, but has never heard of Pharoah Seti I. Or maybe it's that the initial Egyptian set looks more animated than the ones in Prince of Egypt. Maybe it's that the mummy looks different in every shot, as they switch from dummy mummy to computer effect without checking for similarities. Maybe it's the idiotic bald-dude villain you see ten times more than the mummy. Maybe it's the fact that this bald guy roars like a lion. Maybe it's that no one ever looks like they've been told "hey, there's a scary computer mummy dude in this shot, so look frightened." Maybe it's the "army of the undead" at the end, who gain and lose weight at random (depending on whether they're obvious guys in suits or obvious digital effects), lurch around like decomposing Jerry's kids and are far less visually effective than the skeletons from Army of Darkness, which cost less than half as much. Maybe it's that I could count down precisely to every predictable, tired "jump-scene." Maybe it's the THREE "funny-drunk" scenes. Whatever it is, I'm very sorry I wasted two hours on this movie. Forget everything you've heard about this being a Raiders of the Lost Ark clone. There's no way the two movies share even the tiniest bit of DNA.