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Review by Susan Granger
2½ stars out of 4
Forget the guy wrapped in gauze bandages emerging from a
tomb. That's the old "Mummy" with Boris Karloff (1932). This new
version combines a monster thriller with a sense of humor and a dollop
of romance in an exotic setting, plus lots and lots of special
effects. Perhaps having learned from the disasters of "Mary Reilly"
and "Frankenstein," writer/director Stephen Sommers ("Deep Rising")
has turned a low-budget horror movie into a big-budget adventure, set
in Cairo in 1925. The Mummy's story begins when the priest Imhotep
murders the Pharaoh for his gorgeous mistress. When she then dies, he
attempts to summon the deepest, darkest evil entities to bring her
back to life. Caught in this treacherous act, he's mummified alive
with his tongue cut out so he cannot scream. 3,000 years pass before
he's resurrected and regenerated by a French Foreign Legionnaire
(Brendan Fraser), a librarian/Egyptologist (Rachel Weisz), and her
greedy, ne'er-do-well brother (John Hannah), who arrive to plunder The
City of the Dead. The wrathful Mummy (Arnold Vosloo) retaliates by
releasing the seven Biblical plagues on humanity. He's the Terminator
Mummy in this hokey story which has the tone and feel of the
'90s. While Brendan Fraser ("George of the Jungle," "Encino Man")
capitalizes on his charming, self-deprecating goofiness - muttering,
"We are in serious trouble" - he's no Indiana Jones. In fact, the
real "star" is the CGI wizard. It's terrifying to see a scarab
burrowing under someone's skin and moving up the arm; it's amazing to
watch people turning into boil-covered zombies; and it's awesome to
witness the "wall of sand" in the desert. On the Granger Movie Gauge
of 1 to 10, "The Mummy" is a scary, spooky 6. With a PG-13 rating,
it's the first of the big summer popcorn pictures.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
