The Mummy
                                                                                                                 
Director: Alex Kurtzman
Year: 2017
Rating: 5.5
I am paying penance for my sins by watching all the bad blockbusters that came out over the past bunch of years. Today it was The Mummy. The film has been set upon by the critics like a pack of ravaged dogs looking for fresh meat with little mercy. And it happily offers them morsel after morsel of frantic zany nuttiness that bounces around between genres and moods like a rabid bouncing ball that never comes to rest. And it makes absolutely no sense and seems to take pride in that. Just give the audience anything we can think of. Don't worry if it seems silly and pointless. This is the stupid season. They won't have time to think about it.


 
What seems odd in retrospect is why Tom Cruise involved himself in this. Maybe it was the multi-million paycheck but at the time it looked like he was going to turn Jack Reacher into a franchise to go along with his Mission Impossible one - perhaps he hoped this would become another. There had already been a truckload of Mummy films over the past decade or two - did we really need another? In the world of big budget films bringing in over $400 million at the box office was a failure because it didn't cover cost. So, though the ending looks like it was going to have a sequel -  no such luck for Mummy fanatics. It's hard not to think of the Mummy films from the 1930s and 40's when all you needed was a fake tomb and rags for an actor to wear. Then he walks very slowly and crosses continents and seas and kills people who can't run away. What could be stupider, but it worked. It was fun. Now they are so laden with CGI that they cost bundles of money and deliver less.




So they throw it all into a soup and stir madly hoping no one notices - we get ISIS, Templar Knights coming back to life, spiders and ravens, a friendly comic ghost who wants to be in a buddy movie, sandstorms sweeping through London as if they have not had enough problems, Jekyll and Hyde - yup that Jekyll and Hyde - and a female Mummy trying her best to turn Tom Cruise into a God. Of course, what she doesn't realize is that would be a step down for Cruise. It is hard to know if the filmmakers are just having fun or whether this is a big budget studio film that totally lost its moorings. One nice change is that the Mummy is a female and a hot one at that. Played by Sofia Boutella who just recently starred in Rebel Moon part one and two - two films that I think I was the only person to enjoy. I liked it when Cruise tells the psychotic Mummy who wants him to love her - "You killed your father, his wife, her baby", to which she replies, "Those were different times". Sort of what I say when people complain about non-PC films of long ago. And I wonder if it was an inside joke that Russell Crowe plays Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as he seems to be one himself at times. I don't think there has been another Mummy since this. Perhaps the Mummy is finally dead.