The Mummy | MOVIE REVIEW

In case you forgot, the last time we got a Mummy movie without Brendan Fraser in it, we got that wreck of a movie that was The Scorpion King... But, then again, the last time we got a Mummy movie with Brendan Fraser in it, we ended up with Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It's fair to say the odds of this movie being any good are mixed, to say the least.

The Mummy was directed by Alex Kurtzman and stars Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, and everyone's favorite Algerian Sofia Boutella. It's the first entry in Universal's (dubiously named) Dark Universe - which, I think is the most unnecessary of the current cinematic universes - and is, more or less, a reboot of The Mummy (the one with Brendan Fraser in it, a.k.a. the one everyone loves). The story in this one's a bit different, and involves a grave robber (Cruise) and an archaeologist stumbling upon a sarcophagus in the middle of Iraq and bringing it over to Europe.

There's a hitch; the sarcophagus is cursed.

I know what you're thinking. Does it suck? Well, actually, it doesn't, but it isn't particularly good, either. It just is. There are things I liked and things I didn't, and I'm gonna discuss those in detail, starting with what I found cool.

Let's start with the Mummy herself (yup, the monster is a she). She was actually scary, and that was something I, personally, enjoyed seeing. She had some really intense scenes that reminded me of the scenes in Power Rangers that involved Rita Repulsa wreaking havok after her body was salvaged from the ocean. A lot of the scenes involving her introduction played out more like a horror movie than an action-adventure, and that was cool.

She even looked really gross and shit, and something about the very twitchy and fidgety way that she moved freaked me out.

She was also very well-portrayed.

Sofia Boutella has impressed me in everything I've seen her in thus far, and this movie was another one of those impressive displays. She had this nice balance of intense and intimidating and her presence on-screen had a lot of weight to it. I liked what she brought to the role and was a lot better than I thought she was gonna be.

Russell Crowe looked like he was having a lot of fun in his role. He was fun to watch and, in that sense, he reminded me of Emperor Palpatine from Revenge of the Sith. I thought he was cool and I liked his character in the movie.

His identity is a bit of a spoiler, so I won't mention who he is.

Personally, I enjoyed seeing the backstory in the beginning. It felt like a bit of a retreading of the Brendan Fraser story, but they've changed enough to keep it still somewhat fresh. It was an interesting story that, I felt, did help give weight to the Mummy herself.

As far as the action sequences go, the movie did have a couple of really entertaining ones. I thought the scene involving the plane crash (the one that was featured in the trailer) was intense and it did keep me on the edge of my seat as it was going down.

There was another action scene I enjoyed and thought was cool, but it also felt unnecessary - like, really unnecessary. Talking about it in detail would end up making me spoil some of it, so I'll just leave it at that. While it was fun to watch, I don't think it needed to be there.

Also, Annabelle Wallis was hot. I'm not gonna lie, she is great to look at.

However, while she was definitely really good-looking, I thought her acting was a bit off. I'm not sure if it was the performance or the writing - it could've been both - but something about her portrayal seemed off. Her lines didn't land, her comic delivery and timing was far from being the best thing in the world, and there were times wherein I felt she was being dubbed over and it sounded really, really bad.

In fact, I think the movie's biggest flaw and weakness is its script because that shit was a mess. Apparently it was written by three people, who, presumably, had three different visions for the movie, and, as I watched the movie, I could tell that it was written by more than one person. The tone was all over the place and the comedy that was supposed to come with the more light-hearted aspect of the movie just fell flat for me. It didn't work.

Honestly, there was this one character I absolutely could not stand, and that was Sgt. Vale (played by Jake Johnson). He was constantly bitching about everything and he was just a pain in the ass to watch. He was supposed to be the funny sidekick but, since his lines were so bad (I'm not even kidding, a lot of them were awful), he just came off as really annoying.

Even Tom Cruise was really annoying sometimes.

Okay, so he did commit a lot to the action scenes but when he wasn't doing some crazy stunt, it felt as if he was phoning it in sometimes. Personally, I couldn't find myself rooting for his character at all because he was such a douche. Granted the movie does have some form of "character development" in it, but you don't buy it because he doesn't show any sort of worry for anyone else.

I didn't buy into his motivations and the romance that's supposed to bloom between him and another character came off as really forced to me. He kept going on about how much he cares for this girl but he never shows it and never does anything out of the ordinary to prove it. All that left me doing was asking myself, "okay, if he doesn't care, then why should I?"

The dialog in here was really clunky, too. Nothing felt organic, and conversations never felt as if they flowed naturally. A lot of it was awkward, and that extended to the humor in the movie. Seriously, none of it worked for me. Jokes were either drawn out too long or were beaten over my head so much that they lost any sort of humor that they could have had.

It wasn't as bad as the failed attempts at humor in Skull Island, but it still left a lot to be desired.

One other thing that really annoyed me was how the whole plot was being spoonfed to me. There literally were scenes in the movie dedicated to letting the audience know that this is what happened and that this is what else is gonna happen - I hated it. I really do hate when they do that throughout the whole movie, it just makes me feel like the filmmakers think the audience is dumb as shit.

The worst thing about having the way the filmmakers did it in this movie was that they would explain everything that had happened in a previous scene. Okay, to put things into perspective, imagine if in Civil War, they had a scene right after the airport fight wherein Tony explains to Spiderman everything that happened in complete detail. It does nothing for the movie and does't move the plot forward. Scenes like those are useless, and there are better ways to refresh your audience.

On the topic of scenes that do nothing for the plot or for the characters, this movie has way too many of them. There are characters you could remove from this movie and their absence would have no effect on the film. Some characters' sole purposes are to either explain plot elements or explain shit that's only gonna be relevant to the shared universe it's setting up. Take, for example, Russell Crowe out of the movie, and it wouldn't be any different.

That, and they got the mythology wrong.

And, just a little side note: in the movie, they call Set the Egyptian god of the dead. Anubis is actually the god of the dead; Set is the god of chaos. It just sticks out of me that way when a movie with a plot steeped in some sort of mythology has the mythology all messed up.

Despite these flaws, I can't look at you straight in the eye and say that The Mummy was a pile of garbage. It's an okay movie - it's consumable entertainment that you can turn your brain off to watch. For my money, though, I feel like The Mummy would've been better if I was drunk. As far as my personal ratings go, I'll give The Mummy a McKayla.

The Brendan Fraser one was so much better.

God, I miss Brendan.

So, The Mummy - what did you think of it? Let me know what you thought by leaving a comment below. As always, this has been Rafa. Stay classy.