(What?)
THE MUMMY (1999)
Blogtober Qualifications: Mummies, death, insects, cheesy one-liners
The time: Ancient. The place: Egypt.
A voiceover narrates to us the story of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) and Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez), respectively a priest and concubine to the emperor, in love with each other and engaged in a secret affair. No sooner do we learn this, however, than does the Emperor also become aware, and before long the lovers are both dead, with Imhotep specifically cursed and buried alive.
Flash forward a few thousand years and we meet Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser), adventurer extraordinaire, who has discovered a secret city in the desert that a lot of dudes in heavy cloaks desperately want to keep secret. The leader of these dudes is Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr), and he'll become quite familiar with O'Connell over the course of the film. The fight scene is long, but O'Connell manages to make it out of the city alive.
Finally we cut forward again, only three years this time, to meet Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz), a librarian working in Cairo, and her brother Jonathan (John Hannah), whose job is apparently just gambling, stealing, and being British. Jonathan has come into possession of a strange key from ancient Egypt and brings it to Evy so that she can help him figure out what it is. Before long they come into contact with O'Connell, and the three (and some others) set off into the desert in the hopes of finding knowledge and riches. *spoilers* They also find a mummy.
To begin with, as mentioned before, I was a kid when this movie came out, about nine years old. I remember it being a thing, and I vaguely remember wanting to see it, though I didn't get a chance to. So I was honestly pretty excited to finally sit down and watch it. I wasn't expecting much more than a dumb 90s action adventure, but what I got was... actually a bit less than that.
I'll begin with the cast. Brendan Fraser is horribly, horribly miscast. I feel bad saying that, since, despite his history of starring in mediocre movie after mediocre movie, I actually like him for some reason. He's never done anything awful that I've experienced, and he seems like an okay guy off camera. But seriously. Seriously. The man is not action hero material. And, bless his heart, he tries so hard. He attempts the fight scenes, he attempts the swagger, he attempts the one-liners, he attempts firing a shotgun while holding the next shell in his mouth like a cigarette, and it just. Doesn't. Work.
It's like he's the skinny kid on the block, and you let him play Indiana Jones, but he's actually playing Han Solo. If, in another universe, the movie were completely rewritten with his character being more of a copy of Indiana Jones (or maybe James Spader's character from Stargate), I think it would work better, but there's a severe disconnect here between what we're meant to be seeing and what we actually are. I'm against typecasting, but certain people just don't fit certain roles. Going back to the Han Solo example, imagine if Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill had been in opposite roles in Star Wars. Neither of those characters would be as beloved today.
But enough of that. I don't mean to rip apart Brendan Fraser, because I genuinely have nothing against him, and he tried his best.
His female equivalent also falls short, but only just so. It is, of course, completely ridiculous that a woman so impossibly gorgeous is stuck stocking bookshelves in a basement library in Cairo (by the way, can I just comment on how stupid it is that those bookshelves were arranged in a circle around the room? Who does that?), but that's neither here nor there. However, early on in the movie, O'Connell forces a kiss on her, just for the fun of it (which kind of makes sense in context, but isn't really any less questionable than it sounds.) She, of course, begins to fall for him, and she is frustrated and annoyed that he doesn't seem to return her affections (until he sees her in a more revealing outfit, that is.)
Are you kidding me? This is Rachel effing Weisz! It is impossible that she would be single unless she chooses to be. It's possible that the idea is that she's been spending so much time engaged in library-ing that she hasn't had time for romance, but it is implied that she has at least some experience in that arena.
Anyway, aside from that, she doesn't really get to do much but get captured and exposit, though, in fairness, she does solve most of the puzzles and gets to use her knowledge of Egypt a fair bit, so yeah. All in all it's not too bad.
Her brother Jonathan, the comic relief character (one of them, anyway), isn't funny, but he's also not annoying, so that's something.
Ardeth Bay is the coolest character in the movie, but that's not really saying much. Fehr pulls off the whole "leader of the secret order of warriors" role pretty well, and I've just realized that one of my own original characters, Ashael, is possibly partially inspired by him, so that's pretty sweet. He gets a solid B+ from me.
Arnold Vosloo's Imhotep (who I genuinely thought was Billy Zane when I first saw him) is a tough nut to crack. He himself is intimidating, but all he ever really does is speak Egyptian, roar, and turn into sand. There's a lot of talk about how powerful he is, and we are at least shown that he probably is actually as powerful as they say, but he doesn't really use it in any interesting ways, outside of a couple small exceptions. There's something about him bringing about the Plagues, but it's really rushed, and they don't even use Frogs, which is the best Plague. Wikipedia tells me they're also out of order, so yeah, c'mon guys, get your act together.
Still, at least he's not wrapped in bandages and strangling everyone.
Speaking of Imhotep, he acts as a perfect segue into how absolutely ridiculous the curse cast upon him is. Evy exposits at one point that the curse Imhotep was made to endure was so frightening and disturbing that she had never even heard of it actually being implemented before (which makes me wonder why they wrote it down at all). However, I have another theory as to why they never really used this particular curse, and I'll try to be brief with it.
BECAUSE IT TURNS HIM INTO A GOD.
Seriously, he committed the worst crime in the world (apparently), and yet he's "punished" by being granted all these awesome powers of controlling sand and controlling the dead (and the living), and CREATING THE PLAGUES. Then they lock him away under the assumption that no one will ever, for the rest of eternity, attempt to open his tomb. But just in case, they train this secret sect of warriors and keepers to protect his tomb, but don't actually have them living anywhere near it.
There are some other minor plot niggles and contrivances, but it's mostly superficial. It's also about a half an hour too long, and slogs a bit when the characters leave the secret city to go to Cairo then have to get back to the secret city, but I don't find it excruciatingly boring. Just sort of boring.
And that brings me to the biggest disappointment I encountered. The movie is not quite bad, but it is pretty dull. The action scenes, while they may have been exciting at the time, just aren't anymore. It's also not helped by my previous complaints about Brendan Fraser as the person who's meant to be anchoring all these action scenes.
Don't ask if the CG holds up, because you know it doesn't and it's unfair that you expect it to.
In summation, 1999's big budget mummy movie has seen its time come and pass. From what I've seen it gets a lot of praise, but I have to believe that this is a result of the 90s being inundated with horrible action movies. The Mummy got an automatic pass because it was slightly above mediocre. If you're curious about the movie and have two hours with nothing better to do, there is fun to be had, but it isn't enough to entice passersby.
Tomorrow brings the conclusion to the mummython and, from what I hear we should be seeing a continuation of the downward trend in quality. Still, I'm keeping an open mind and hoping for the best.
Until next time!
Current Interests:
Listening - Rush: Caress of Steel (1975)
Playing - Golf Story (2017)
Reading - Baltimore or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (2007)
Watching - Thunderbirds Are Go! (2015)
No comments:
Post a Comment