The Mummy

The 1999 version of The Mummy, and it's (first) sequel may not have been Oscar contenders by any means, but they were at least a lot of fun. They were good films to put on in the background on a rainy Saturday and not mind if you missed a couple of minutes to do something else. Good, solid adventure flicks. This one, the 2017 reboot starring Tom Cruise, however, is void of everything that made the 1999 version and its sequel good in any way.

The first half hour of The Mummy is fine. The setup and locations hark back to the older films, with deserts, tombs, and mythical curses. A promising setup, but once the famed "zero-gravity scene" finishes, The Mummy dissolves into a boring, clichéd mess of a film that never knows what tone it wants to be and spends way too much time trying to be a setup for future films (a la The Amazing Spiderman 2) and less of its own thing with traces of something more (a la Iron Man).

Any attempt at "horror" the film has can be boiled down to multiple predictable jump scares, which wouldn't be that bad if they weren't so consecutive. One scene contains around five jumps in as many minutes, maybe less, and by the final one the viewer is left waiting for it, which cheapens and lessens the "jump" effect. The comedy falls flat at nearly every turn, managing to only make me laugh once despite having a character whose sole purpose is seemingly to crack jokes that are less than solid. The action also consists mainly of Tom Cruise running away from things, which is, admittedly, funny and pretty great in most other films, is boring, dry, and repetitive in The Mummy. There are only a few "fight scenes" and they're shot poorly and, in some cases, are too dark to tell what's happening. It's a fundamentally broken film, poorly written and directed seemingly mashed together to try and get the "Dark Universe" started fast rather than started right.

But is there any good in it? Kinda. Russell Crowe is good as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and some of the setup for future films is cool. But not much else, and having a couple pieces of the puzzle in the right spot and all the others in the wrong doesn't make for a good picture. I appreciate the value and attempt to start the Dark Universe, but unfortunately it might be dead on arrival. That being said, if Universal has good movies up its sleeves, I want this to succeed. It may not, though, and at this point, only the box office returns will show if Universal's proposed shared universe will make it to a second film, or go the way of The Wolfman and Dracula Untold.

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4.5 out of 10