The Mummy (’99)
“The Mummy” is a blockbuster that represents the way Hollywood got escapism wrong in the wake of “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and CGI wrong after “Jurassic Park.” The film is essentially an Indiana Jones riff, in addition to being a big-budget adaptation of the classic Universal monster movie with Boris Karloff, and it’s clear that- between the first two films in this series, and 2004’s “Van Helsing”- that writer-director Stephen Sommers has affection for those old monster movies, and ideas for how to update them. Sadly, that basically means over-indulging in modern visual effects, and not really going for scares as much as adventure. It doesn’t work in any of these attempts.
Watching it for the first time in two decades, I have much more clarity on why Sommers’s film doesn’t work for me, and it’s all because of the tone. The mid to late ’90s started to see an over-indulgence in goofy humor in big movies, with Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay being among the worst offenders. Sommers is another example here, and as Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser), Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and Jonathan (John Hannah) go on their adventure looking for the lost city of Hamunaptra, and accidentally awaken the mummy, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), the premise is the classic mummy story by way of Indiana Jones, but the tone feels closer to Emmerich’s “Godzilla” or “Stargate,” with bumbling characters and attempts at broad laughs falling flat when danger and adventure should be the name of the game. (Disclaimer- I do like “Stargate,” but it’s a good comparison for what I’m talking about here. I just think Emmerich and Dean Devlin get the mix closer there than this does.) Fraser does not have the look of a world-weary adventurer, and he’s just too goofy in his natural persona to capture the rugged appeal of Ford as Indy, and the first time we meet Evelyn, she’s working in a library, and causes all of the bookshelves to domino down. And Hannah as Weisz’s brother is a character that ODs on being comic relief, without really being funny. This was a summer light on big blockbusters, and none of them- not this, not “The Phantom Menace,” and not “Wild Wild West”- found that sweet spot they were going for. That “The Phantom Menace” came closest is a sad reflection on how bad it really was.
The tone is not the only thing that causes “The Mummy” to falter, though; the over-use of CGI is downright awful, and the actual effects have dated horribly. The opening scene, where Sommers sets up the story of Imhotep that our heroes will find themselves in the middle of, looks completely artificial, to the point where the thundering Jerry Goldsmith score seems to be over-compensating for the lack of substance. (The narration does not help matters. I understand the need to setup the story, but here it is used to gloss over how weak a storyteller Sommers is.) And the effects do not get any better; yes, some of the sand storm effects are decent, but the CG Imhotep, the fully decomposed one, is atrocious-looking, and the scarab beetles that feed off of flesh do not look real, at all. In addition to the indulgence of goofy humor, excessive reliance on CG over practical effects and stunt work is a big component of this era of blockbuster, and the “Mummy” movies are examples of why this type of effects-driven blockbuster essentially died when superhero movies and franchises like “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” came on the scene; audiences were ready to care about characters again, and “The Mummy” didn’t really give them any to become invested in.
There are some positives here, believe it or not. That thundering Goldsmith score does have some really great music from the legendary composer in it, although it’s not one I would ever consider owning. Despite how the characters are written, and how they are directed to play them, Fraser and Weisz have real chemistry in this movie that works in its favor. Vosloo is a great antagonist for this film, and when he is nearly fully-formed in the end, his presence helps the movie. There are also a couple of sequences that work the way they should, also. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough to prevent this from being a ridiculous movie, and an example of the worst instincts of Hollywood moviemaking.
