Alright... thus far on THE MUMMY we had the test screening that wound up with a couple of good responses here at AICN and a couple of negatives over at Dark Horizons. At that screening there were virtually zero visual effects shots finished... but now... there are... and here's a review of that... And as such he had a lot of fun with the film... seemed to enjoy it quite a bit and does some favorable comparisons with certain godly-geekishly-cool movies... Enjoy
While on a break from plotting Peter Parker's doom I attended a screening of The Mummy last week at Universal Citywalk, so here's my review:
Plot in a nutshell: In ancient Egypt a man (played by the guy who was Lance's right hand man in Hard Target and took over the Darkman films) has the ultimate curse put on him after he's caught having an affair with the Pharoh's bride (a hottie whose barely there outfit had the guys in the crowd cheering). He is buried alive, never to be released from his eternal torture, yadda yadda yadda...
Okay, so the movie takes place in 1925 and involves a group of people (led by Brendan Fraser) who are attempting to uncover a mythical lost city in Egypt and unfotunately in the process end up freeing mister curse, AKA The Mummy. Chaos and wackiness ensues.
Sorry, I get bored with the plot explanation. On to my review:
It's a fun movie. It's a B movie in tone. Which to me can be the best types of theater experiences. Did you see Deep Rising? (same director). Did you enjoy it? I did. I thought it was a fun, very intentionally campy, tounge in cheek movie. Well, this is more of the same. Many will find this movie "stupid." There's no arguing it's silly. But if you can enjoy that purposely camp tone, you'll like this. Stephen Sommers (I believe that's the directors name) is a hair away from going all the way over the top like Army of Darkness, which may have been safer then what he does here which is lots of silliness, but not SO silly that everyone knows it's suppossed to be I think.
Speaking of Army, this movie echos it at one point near the end. In fact at certain points many films came to mind based on moments in the movie. Night of the Living Dead for one. Certainly, the movie The Mummy will be compared to the most is Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that's not far off. It's a supernatural action adventure set in the early part of this century, involving archelogical (sp?) digs gone wrong (dont ya hate when that happens?) And it all was very fun. It really is a lot of action adventure/horror elements thrown together in one screwball, silly package. But as I warned, for many it will just come off as dumb because of it's tone.
The effects are wonderful. Lots of them weren't complete, but the ones that were kicked ass. The Movieview guy made sure to say that "George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic" were working on the FX before the film started, throwing in King George's name as extra backup I guess.
The acting is all fine. Everyone's fairly over the top, fitting the tone. Kevin J. O'Conner who played Joey in Deep Rising is back as a similar, though more evil character. Upon seeing him my roomate and I both went "JO-EY!" (if you've seen Deep Rising, especially the last scene, you should get that).
And you gotta love when a movie set in 1925 throws in it's hero using two guns John Woo style (this is the first scene we see Fraser in). The guns of course only hold six bullets, so what does he do, but drop them and take two more guns off his belt and continue shooting.
Well I gotta go make some more pumpkin bombs. Till next time...
-NORMAN OSBORN
