Mummified Flick

Rating: 1/10 (8 May 1999)

"The Mummy" Trust me, I'm not opposed to having fun with silly material. I don't consider myself a dour person and I love a good "bad" movie. My take on "The Mummy" is this : Expectations were high, and the filmmakers blew it. Set with a 80 million dollar budget and a distinctly stinky track record, how could I believe in my mind that director Stephen Sommers could pull this off? The movie is a mess of really lame and desperate jokes, boisterous effects, and an unproved cast. Brendan Fraser leads this journey with a pinch of Indiana Jones, a dash of Jerry Lewis, and a sprinkle of a Barry White baritone. I don't like Mr. Fraiser, and his usual wooden performance doesn't suit the material. By trying to make him into the hero, the film succeeds in showing off even more of Mr. Fraser's limits. John Hannah makes for a passable lackey, and Rachel Weisz is delightful as the "girl" of the film(I was already a fan). The two actors who really ooze mediocrity are Kevin J. O'Conner as the sniveling bad guy, and Arnold Vosloo as the title character. While being a computer creation for most of the piece, Mr. Vosloo has to take over at the end of the film.
Trouble is, he's not scary at all. He resembles more of an aging lawyer who just flew back from Jamaica than a mummified agent from hell. The effects, which took up 1/4 of the budget, are in turns both impressive and depressing. Using the computer to enhance a sky or to make 5 people 500... That's fantastic. Using the same technology to create a noisy environment where each effect looks worse than the next is where I draw the line (Trust me, Spielberg was on to something when he used REAL insects in "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom"). All the CG stuff looks incredibly false to me, my kingdom for a guy in a rubber suit! Sommers has no tricks up the sleeve except to continuously bombard the senses with noise and predictable humor. It could have been fun, it should have been great, what's left is the biggest letdown from a Hollywood production in some time.---------- 2