The Last Great Adventure Film

Rating: 10/10 (23 September 2009)

Don't get me wrong, we have had lots of great movies since '99, but I really feel that this is the last one where it was just 10 for 10 great. And it was a great way to end the 90's, which I still believe to be one of the best movie decades; we knew how to make great movies and we knew how to make great trailers for those great movies--not just rapidly flashing scenes with drums and clashing and building violins, but REAL trailers edited to perfection with great music.
"The Mummy" just packs it all; from Adventure to Horror to Fantasy to Drama to Comedy, and in my humble opinion, it succeeds superbly in all five genres. It is just such a FUN movie! The sites (and sights), the sound design, the CGI (while I won't say it's perfect), and, of course, Jerry Goldsmith's masterpiece of a score which can take Alan Silvestri's for "The Mummy Returns" to the cleaners any day of the week.
While "The Mummy" was a blockbuster, it is sadly one of those unappreciated movies. Shortly after its release is when movies began to take a turn for the worse and become darker, and for what ever crackbutt reason, darker is what the American Audience wants. Audiences just want movies where everyone dies (a lot of the time including the hero(es)), the music is heavily synthesized, and the plot is simplistic.
"The Mummy" is an epic adventure from beginning to end. And I can only hope that our movies return to this movie-type some day soon. While I do like "The Mummy Returns", it was a little too silly for me. And "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor"? No comment. The first one just captures the fun-ness that movies are SUPPOSED to be; a movie that grabs you out of your world so you almost feel as if you're IN the movie (he said, at the risk of sounding either cheezy or loony), very much in the tradition of "Jurassic Park" and its sequel.
It's just truly a classic, and will hopefully remain so long enough to see a day when it is appreciated again.