"I only gamble with my life, never my money!"

Rating: 7/10 (16 September 2019)

I saw this movie upon original release and not again till the other day, and I'd forgotten how much fun the whole thing was. And how gorgeous actress Patricia Velasquez was in the role of Anck Su Namun, wife of the Pharoah but lover of the High Priest Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo). She really should have had a much larger role. What I did recall was all the great CGI effects with the shifting and shape forming desert sands, along with the mummy effects when Imhotep was brought back to life. The principal players all shared a well defined chemistry, and I liked the low key humor of the often outmatched brother Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah). Interestingly, the movie retained a lot of the Boris Karloff original from 1932, maintaining many of the same characters and story elements. The only thing I wish movies like this would do a better job of is identifying all of it's principal characters. For example, if the tattooed Arab leader Ardeth Bey's (Oded Fehr) name was mentioned, I didn't catch it. It's a little thing, but would prevent one from wondering who the heck the guy is that has such a large role in the story. Be that as it may, you could have a good time with this picture when in the right frame of mind. Maybe not so for impressionable young kids who might be scared by the walking mummy corpses; you might have to hold them off for a while.