Combining the wild adventurous spirit of an Indiana Jones movie, the mind-numbing terror
of a classic zombie flick, and the blatant racial stereotyping of your favourite Nazi
propaganda films, The Mummy is an old-fashioned creature-feature from director Stephen
Sommers, who was last seen failing miserably with the classic Deep Rising. You remember,
the one with the ocean liner over-run with giant worms from beneath the sea? No? Fine
then. Brendan Fraser (last seen thoroughly embarassing himself in George of the Jungle)
is the tomb-raiding American Tommy McMummy, who teems up with beautiful librarian (you
know, one of those) Rachel Wiesz, her thieving yet charming brother, and an Arab merchant
dubbed 'our smelly friend' by the rest of the gang. On a quest for the lost city of
Necropolis, they accidentally unleash the undead priest Imhotep, who was mummified and
cursed for all eternity for making the nasty with the pharaoh's wife. Imhotep is sort of
cheesily computer animated at the beginning of the movie, but as he consumes more victims,
he grows more human and a little more realistic. He enlists the help of another Arab, who
substitutes stealing for smelling bad to round out the stereotypes, played by Sommers
favourite Kevin J O'Connor (Deep Rising, Lord of Illusions), who is decidedly not Arabic.
Most of the special effects are truly awesome, like this face that comes out of a sandstorm,
and there are lots of funny little asides that show they aren't really taking themselves
too seriously (like casting Encino Man as the lead didn't tip us off enough), but on the
whole I wasn't as impressed as I expected to be. It was still time well spent, though, and
there's nothing like an undead zombie prying out somebody's eyes to liven up a dreary day.
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