The video game as cinema equals a bad movie and boredom.

Rating: 3/10 (7 October 1999)

It's difficult to hate THE MUMMY, it's just impossible to respect it. You can't damn it out of hand, like Francis Coppola's vulgarization of DRACULA (formally titled BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA for some reason that escapes the understanding of people who have actually read the book). THE MUMMY does not come from a consistent literary source. So, you can't accuse it of purporting to be something that it's not. If you prefer the 1932 Karloff/Karl Freund Mummy or 1959 Hammer version with Cushing/Lee/Terence Fisher, then it's simply a matter of taste. You can't argue taste.
The problem is that this movie bearing the same title leaves a very bad taste. It insults its audience by playing to the lowest common denominator. The script seems to be the work of many hands. That might account for the many inconsistencies in story telling logic. The style (if that is the word) of the acting and directing is basically TV sit-com.
The special effects are much too obviously CGI. In their own way, they are just as artificial as the special effects of earlier generations that utilized optical printing with traveling mattes (with obvious matte lines) and/or rear projection. The problem is that our eyes become educated over time. The stage illusionist's trick that dazzled us as small children seems hopelessly coy to us a adults. The same thing is true of some of the techniques that ILM has developed over the past 20-odd years. Whatever film stock they choose, pixels look like pixels.
Ultimately, special effects are no substitute story telling with a consistent point of view and characters who involve us emotionally. THE MATRIX, another movie that is basically a video game, does have a point of view; characters with at least some emotional life; and a unified approach to expressing a reasonably consistent point of view. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT makes up for what it lacks in production values with intensity; an interesting point of view; and even a certain degree of novelty. THE SIXTH SENSE gains its power by being first and foremost a story about human beings.
The makers of THE MUMMY have no real idea of what they want to accomplish, hence the kitchen sink approach to story telling. It's anything for a cheap thrill. The end result is just plain cheap, despite the budget. Turning this into third rate Indiana Jones was a no brainer for the film makers, not that they have exhibited much in the ways of brains. For instance, anyone who has actually read the Book of Exodus (all right, or seen DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS) knows that the plagues of Egypt were inflicted by the Hebrew God. Therefore, it follows logically that they cannot be unleashed by the gods of ancient Egypt. Not that logic, taste, or intelligence ever mattered to the people who unleashed this mess.
Without a script that has a shred of human feeling, there isn't much for the actors to do but react to "blue screen." The result is just plain embarrassing. To use that tired old film school expression, didn't the film makers ever seriously consider giving the characters an "arc."
A word to Brendan Fraser, if you happen to be reading: You have been blessed with a career that is granted to very few young actors in any era. You possess a very rare combination of gifts. You are the best farceur/leading man to emerge in films since Kevin Kline & Cary Grant. You are a solid dramatic actor, as proven in SCHOOL TIES and GODS & MONSTERS. You are potentially the best action movie hero of the New Millennium. You have the golden opportunity to work as long as you want to work. Just please, use your gifts and your apparent intelligence with keener judgment in future. It could be a very bright one.
By then, this dismal affair will just be a dim memory of youthful indiscretion.
To anyone who hasn't actually seen this mediocrity: If you are desperate to find some way to waste two hours of your life, believe me, there a much better ways to do it.