The Mummy

Starring: Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari
Directed by: Alex Kurtzman
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: An adventurer (Tom Cruise) unwittingly releases an ancient Mummy (Sofia Boutella) from her tomb. She awakens, bent on destruction and revenge.

Review:

Tim: When I first heard that Universal was attempting to build a cinematic universe with their various monsters, I thought "eh". Maybe it could be cool, maybe not. When I heard Tom Cruise was making The Mummy, I again shrugged my shoulders. But, when I saw the first trailer, I was shocked how good it looked. So, I went into this film excited about the prospects, even though I knew critics weren't wowed. Unfortunately, in this case, they were right- this is a pretty lackluster movie. It's odd, because there's a lot of strong elements in place. Unfortunately, director Alex Kurtzman doesn't know what to do with them all. He routinely misses opportunities. This movie is decent, but it's certainly disappointing.

We've had a ton of Mummy movies over the years. This is the fourth movie with the title of The Mummy that I've seen- the 1932 version, 1959, the incredible 1999 version, and now the 2017 version. So, we needed to see something new, something exciting here. The film does try to give us something new, but it's still quite ineffective. The most striking change is that we get a female Mummy. I guess that's progress, but Sofia Boutella isn't the greatest actress in the world. I thought she was fine as Ahmanet, but she's never going to be the most memorable villain. It felt like her story was just the same story in every movie like this. It didn't feel like anything we hadn't seen before.

The other new twist was placing this film within the larger context of Universal's proposed Dark Universe. The big inclusion here is Russell Crowe as Henry Jekyll. It was kind of cool to see the famed Dr. Jekyll in a Mummy movie. I liked the idea of combining various monsters together, but the execution is a little lacking. Jekyll's inclusion feels a bit forced, a bit not thought out. He kind of makes sense in the larger context of the film, but his appearance takes the movie in a slightly offbeat direction. It certainly sets up the larger universe, but it doesn't contribute to the story of this one. His inclusion is cool, but it hurts the story. That's never a good trade off.

While this movie makes errors in its attempt to set up its cinematic universe, the most egregious error is that the story isn't all that interesting. It feels like a retread of various other movies. The characters aren't fully fleshed out and feel too one-dimensional. As a result, we never really care about Tom Cruise's character. His banter with Jake Johnson felt forced. He didn't have much chemistry with Annabelle Wallis. We never get invested in him. He seemed surprisingly unlikable. It's odd that the first film of a proposed cinematic universe would center around the character of Nick Morton. He's not especially interesting or likable. His arc feels odd, especially the major events towards the end of the film. It's just an odd story and it never connects with the audience the way that it should.

The movie felt surprisingly devoid of great action sequences. The visual effects are pretty solid, but I wasn't overly engaged in any of the action scenes. The airplane crash scene was probably the highlight, but otherwise, most of the scenes are fairly forgettable. There's a big action scene early in the film with bullets flying and some big explosions, but it felt somewhat bland. The rest of the film features a number of visual action scenes, but Kurtzman does a really poor job of depicting them. I can barely remember most of them- they just don't have much impact.

Tom Cruise never feels comfortable in the lead role. While this is definitely in his wheelhouse, Kurtzman didn't do a great job of directing him. Cruise usually connects with the audience, but it doesn't happen here. Jake Johnson is similarly disappointing. He was supposed to bring the comedic relief, but his performance felt very forced. Annabelle Wallis is a little better than her poor performance in Annabelle, but I doubt anyone would call her work here "good". Russell Crowe is perhaps the best part of the film, but he was saddled with a role that felt crammed into the film. Still, I enjoyed his brief performance. As a whole, the cast really doesn't live up to its potential.

Not only is The Mummy a disappointing remake, but the low box office figures have caused Universal to completely rethink their proposed Dark Universe. It'll be fascinating to see if they continue the plans, but they already lost two of the architects of the Dark Universe, including Alex Kurtzman (and based on the performance of this film, that might not be a huge loss). So, not only is this film a disappointment, but it embarrassingly may have killed the Dark Universe before it started. Hopefully Universal learns from this- building a cinematic universe is extremely difficult. While I would have loved to see all the Universal monsters in a team up film (but why that would happen is beyond me), I want to see great movies. The Mummy is not a great movie, it's not even a good one. There's no way to look at this movie and not see a major disappointment.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Mummy (1999), Dracula Untold