Review: The Mummy

Soldiers of fortune Tom Cruise and Jake Johnson are recruited by Annabelle Wallis to exhume the tomb of mummified Egyptian pharaoh Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella). She gets reawakened and all hell goes loose. Russell Crowe turns up briefly as Dr. Henry Jekyll, who has a particular interest in monsters.

They’ve seemingly been trying for a modern-day Universal Horror cycle franchise for years now, and it hasn’t worked. Mostly because the films have been largely awful. This 2017 flick from director Alex Kurtzman (best known as a J.J. Abrams associate and screenwriter of “The Island” among other films) and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”, “Valkyrie”) and Jon Spaihts (“Prometheus”, “Doctor Strange”) isn’t as bad as say “Van Helsing”, but still very, very weak. There’s the bare bones of something here…the bare bones of about 12 different undernourished scripts with little or no sense made, particularly on a tonal level (I should add that a few other writers apparently had a hand in the script too, David Koepp among them). Basically, it’s “Van Helsing”, the Brendan Fraser version of “The Mummy”, and “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” all blended together. It’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing, and like “The Golden Compass” (which I personally rather liked) it might stop the franchise dead with just the first outing.

I knew I was in trouble right from the beginning, with a pointless prologue set in England in the 1100s before moving to present day England to tell its story of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh/princess. Yeah. Three minutes in and I’m all ‘Fuck, no. This won’t do’. It’s a dreadful opening stanza, what the hell did the Crusades have to do with anything else here? Sadly, the experience didn’t get any better, though at least it makes a little more narrative sense from then onwards. Well, aside from Russell Crowe’s minor character inexplicably being our narrator for events he only belatedly shows up for. That I could never quite figure out. Sofia Boutella is terrific in the title role, but that’s about it for positives.

Tom Cruise and Jake Johnson (in a good performance as basically this film’s Griffin Dunne from “An American Werewolf in London”) have fun buddy movie chemistry early on, but 1) I like my “Mummy” movies serious and horror-oriented, and 2) The trailers spoil a lot of what happens with Johnson’s character. I like Tom Cruise as an actor, but it’s beyond time that he gives us another “Magnolia”, “A Few Good Men”, or “Rain Man”. He’s a fine action hero, but the guy’s got solid dramatic chops too, so it’s sad seeing him slum in something like this, which isn’t even an action hero flick, really. It straddles a weird line where it’s not the shitty “Raiders” rip-off Brendan Fraser “Mummy” movies nor the Universal/Hammer horror versions, either. In fact, it spends the entire film wildly and unsuccessfully searching for tone and identity. At the very least it appears to be a “Mummy” movie made by someone who isn’t a horror fan. I mean sure, previous versions of “The Mummy” haven’t been terribly scary, but this film’s not even trying to be “The Mummy”, so why call itself that? After about 50 minutes the sort-of buddy movie/action-adventure vibe finally turns to horror, but it’s dull horror. Then Russell Crowe finally turns up to make it something else. It really ends up crapping out, and wasn’t any good to begin with. As for the aforementioned Crowe, he gives one of his worst performances since 1995’s “Virtuosity”. He should be suitably embarrassed, with Mr. Hyde’s chief attribute apparently being a poor cockney accent.

I guess if you cut out the prologue, remove the narration, and get to Cruise sooner and the film would at least be competent, if still wholly unsatisfying. As is, one suspects this was quite the troubled production (Apparently Tom Cruise had quite a bit of creative control over things). An attractive-looking film and Sofia Boutella is terrific, but…is this really the movie they wanted to release? It’s a real mess that never remotely finds an appropriate groove. The action and FX are fine, but somewhat unwelcome if you ask me. No, this just won’t do. Watch “Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb” instead. #NotMyMummy.

Rating: C-