Cheesy Indiana Jones Rip Off, Yet Good

Rating: 7/10 (27 January 2016)

The Mummy was directed by Stephen Sommers and stars Brendan Fraser as an adventurous hero who can carry a lot of guns. The Mummy, just like every other movie in existence, has its good qualities and its bad qualities. Its good qualities include a good plot, and good special effects. Its bad qualities include a bad plot, and bad special effects.
What I mean by the above paragraph is that half of the plot, and half of the special effects, are good. The other half suck. To get started, I'll give a brief synopsis: We start out in ancient Egypt and the Pharoah at the time was a jealous guy. He literally didn't let anybody touch his wife. However, his high priest, a man named Imhotep, and his wife were in the middle of a passionate affair, and are busted by the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh sees the body paint on his wife's arm is smeared, implying that another person has touched her. He is then surprised to see it is Imhotep. He is then murdered by Imhotep and his wife, who then proceeds to kill herself, simply because we need a plot.
Imhotep then runs away, but returns to try to resurrect his long lost love. However, in the middle of the ceremony, he is interrupted by the Pharaoh's guards, and sentenced to the worst torture possible, in which the victim's tongue is cut off, and is mummified alive and put into a sarcophagus with flesh-eating bugs, so that he will suffer for a long period of time. Then, it skips forward to 1923 and our hero, Rick O'Connell, is in the middle of a war for the land in which Imhotep is buried. He is abandoned by his friend, Beni, and is almost killed. He escapes, but is later found in prison 3 years later. A woman, named Evy Camahan, and her brother, Jonathan, bail Rick out, and go on an adventure to uncover treasure near Imhotep's burial site. They later find and open his sarcophagus and release him on accident. They now must find a way to stop his plan to resurrect his lover and defeat him in order so save the world.
The Mummy is very reliant on its special effects. This film was released in 1999, a time when they did not have as good of effects as nowadays. However, most of the CGI in the movie was not only believable, but rather good. For instance, all of the scenes containing Imhotep, prior to his state of full-regeneration, look very real, with pieces of his flesh missing about his body. Also, in scenes where a flesh-eating bug is crawling inside of someone's skin, it looks very real. Despite all of the good effects in this film, some of them are either non-believable, or just plain bad. An example of this would be far-off shots of cities look like a cheap model bought at the local Dollar General of a set from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Another issue would be the plot. Some of the plot makes perfect sense, and really advances the movie, but other pieces feel like they're just there so that there can be a plot. For example, in the middle of the movie, the team figures out that Imhotep wants Evy so that he can use her as his human sacrifice in order to resurrect his ancient girlfriend. Now, why would he choose her? To me, it felt like he chose her just to give Rick a chance to rescue the damsel in distress. Another good example would be how the Mummy must kill all of the men who opened the box that contained the book of death. When he tries to claim his first victim, he is interrupted, and only gets his hands on the man's tongue and eyeballs. This makes no sense; that he had to take his time in order to get the guy's full body. When he kills the other three men, the process happens instantly. But apparently, this first guy was special, because he had to take his sweet time with him.
Despite the dents in the plot, there are well written parts that really help out the movie. One of these parts would be in the middle of the movie, when the treasure hunters are attacked by a group of men guarding the tomb. Rick is about to get killed by one of these men, but lights the fuse of a dynamite stick, which seems like a really stupid idea at the time. However, if any of you listen to the audio commentary, the director explains that this was put in the movie so that the group could see that Rick wasn't at the site just for treasure, he was willing to risk his life, and those around him, for the knowledge of the history contained in the city.
So, through watching it twice, and once with the commentary, overall, I liked The Mummy. It had a decent plot, likable characters, and halfway good CGI. After consideration, I'd give this film a B-, or a 7 out of 10.