Running fast and moving backwards...

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2005)

This remake in name only of the 1932 Karloff movie of the same name is one of those blockbusters churned out by the studios each summer: slick, glossy, high-concept, and loaded with special effects which dispense with the need for any A-list stars. It demands nothing of the viewer other than the ability to follow the simplest of plots  "What's the plan?" asks rummy pilot Winston of our hero O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) at one point. "Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world," replies O'Connell, and you can almost hear some secretary buzzing her faceless studio exec boss each September and reminding him it's time to get rolling on another of those 'save the damsel, kill the bad guy, save the world' flicks the kids like so much. The studios have created something of a rod for their own backs, however; each year, they have to outdo the previous year's product, which means ever greater effects  at the expense, of course, of such luxuries as plot and characterisation. That's not to say The Mummy is a bad film  it's not. It does exactly what it sets out to do which isn't to create a work of any artistic or creative merit but to provide the multiplex crowd with a visceral experience that they will tell their friends is 'cool' and 'awesome'. The film succeeds impressively at this. They will tell their friends it 'rocks', and then forget all about it after they see the next one off the production line. In 1984 Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." Fifteen years later Ardeth Bay tells Rick O'Connell: "This creature is a bringer of death. He will never eat, he will never sleep, he will never stop." That's how far we've come.
See what a lifetime of watching movies does to you? It turns you into a cynic. You begin to learn too much about the films you see, in a sense, so that it takes more than a few explosions and special effects to impress you. The trick is to switch off sometimes, to just let the whole experience roll over you like a gigantic noisy tidal wave that demands nothing of you other than to be swept away by its magnitude.
This one stars Brendan Fraser, a strange leading man; he hasn't been out of work for fifteen years, and in that time he has starred in a string of critical and/or commercial successes and yet his name refuses to become a truly major one in the industry. It's as if he's cursed. He plays former legionnaire Rick O'Connell in this one, languishing in an Egyptian jail until he is saved from hanging by Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz), the world's sexiest librarian, in order that he can help her and her cowardly brother (John Hannah) to find the hidden city of Hamunaptra, where a unimaginable evil waits to be unleashed upon the world. Of course, unleashed it is, and we are subsequently treated to a succession of CGI effects that, six years on, range from mildly impressive to distinctly dodgy as our heroes dash from one predicament to another. It's all good mindless fun at first, A Raiders of the Lost Ark for a new generation, but with more emphasis on violence and gunplay and SFX. O'Connell is no smarter than Indiana Jones was, he's just a reactive hero who leaves all the thinking to the pretty Weisz, who is agreeably cute as the naïve and gullible Evelyn. Unfortunately, the constant fleeing from an assortment of perils that make up the whole of the second half of this movie grows increasingly tiresome after a while. I started growing impatient for the ending rather than worrying over the fate of Rick and Evelyn.
All in all this is a fairly harmless film, an insignificant way to spend a couple of hours if you're going to watch this on the big screen. If you're going to watch this on TV, you're going to inevitably focus more on the acting and characterisation, the plot and continuity (which is truly atrocious at times) and the editing. Don't. Turn off that analytical part of your mind and watch with your eyes only. If you do that you're sure to have a lot of fun