The
Mummy
Rated R
Now showing
In 1932, Karl Freund (cinematographer of Metropolis)
made The Mummy, a beautiful work of expressionism,
sublime terror and clever understatement. A classic of the
Universal horror pictures, The Mummy was smart, deliberate
and challenging in its take on the removal of precious treasures
from their homeland. Sixty-seven years later, American director
Stephen Sommers has remade The Mummy--again for Universal
but this time with a budget of $80 million and special effects
from Industrial Light and Magic. A potential summer blockbuster,
The Mummy is a piece of fluff that boasts the darting
eye of Sommers (co-writer of Tom and Huck), an almost
invisible performance by Brendan Fraser and an obsessive-compulsive
fascination with keeping it clean. Action-packed, swiftly
paced, occasionally charming and often dumb, The Mummy
will thrill millions but challenge no one. Still, it's an
enjoyable popcorn movie--mildly scary, impressively F/Xed
and, when it's not annoying, mindlessly fun.
It begins in 1719 B.C. Egyptian priest Imhotep (Arnold
Vosloo) is caught carrying on with the Pharaoh's beautiful
mistress and punished by a fate worse than death: He is
mummified alive and buried in Hamunaptra, amid an array
of Pharaonic treasures. Fast-forward to mid-1920s Egypt.
American soldier/explorer Rick O'Connell (Fraser) is about
to be hanged when an English librarian named Evelyn (Rachel
Weisz) and her brother Jonathan (John Hannah) rescue him.
They subsequently hire him to lead their expedition to the
treasured but cursed site of Hamunaptra. The outcome is
obvious: Imhotep will be awakened, his curse of a thousand
plagues will be unleashed, and someone wrapped in gauze
will walk around threatening people.
But the main mummy here is no dry stiff confined by bandages.
When Evelyn discovers the mummy, she describes him as "juicy"--and
he only gets juicier. With a Dracula-like need for the life
of others, he eventually becomes the man he once was: a
cross between Billy Zane and Right Said Fred. This is to
the movie's advantage: Vosloo's near-silent mummy is not
only the most fascinating character in the film but the
only person who truly "gets" the spirit of the movie Sommers
tried to make. The director aims for camp, which means everyone
should simultaneously ham it up and play it straight.
Vosloo is smoldering, disdainful and, at times, terrifying.
He's also funny--he's afraid of cats, and his expressions
make it obvious that this isn't what he intended when he
came back from the dead looking for pussy. Conversely, Weisz
is lovely to look at but terrible in rendering a sexy slapstick
heroine. Fraser, though likable, makes the winking jokes
too frank. One more shake of the head and arching of the
eyebrows and he'd need a black waxy mustache to stroke and
twirl.
With The Mummy's cynical hero, desert landscape
and archeological intrigue, Sommers was obviously going
for a Raiders of the Lost Ark feel--something the
whole family could enjoy. But the movie is not clever, tightly
executed or lovable enough to achieve Indy status. The
Mummy should have gone for the R rating with an elaborate
field day à la Army of Darkness. It needed
Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and, most importantly, fluids--blood
exploding from heads, guts flopping out of bodies and cankerous
crud oozing from a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. Now there's
a vision even Karl Freund could love.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 12, 1999
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