Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
So here’s one of those moments where doing the interviews and the preview press for a film gets really interesting when you sit down to actually watch the finished product for review. This one wasn’t on my radar during production because I really don’t think of the franchise unless there’s one coming out. It’s not something I’ve returned to over and over. I generally enjoyed the first MUMMY as a fun summer movie, but haven’t seen it since it came out, and I thought the second one was a warning sign of a growing tendency towards excess by Sommers. When they first announced this one, I remember being moderately interested because of the casting, and then... I sort of stopped thinking about it completely. It’s not something we’ve done much coverage of along the way until the last month, when Universal started turning up the publicity machine for it.
So I talked to Rob Cohen about what he felt like they were doing with the movie, and then I interviewed Maria Bello, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Brendan Fraser, and all of them talked about their vision of the film. And in general, I thought everyone sounded really upbeat about the film they’d made, and excited to be playing with a whole new sort of mythology, and Cohen talked a great game about bringing over some of the monster movie ideas he’d had for SINBAD at Sony, and I started to really hope that this third film might be a solid adventure movie, something to close out the summer in high style. The involvement of Vic Armstrong on the action side of things really spiked my anticipation, since so many of the iconic action beats of the films I grew up on were due in no small part to Armstrong. By the time I walked in to see this, I was actually a little excited.
Too bad the film is inert. Pretty much dead on arrival. For every one thing it does right, there are huge stretches of the movie where it all just seems to be disastrously flat, sluggish, or just plain confused.
The film’s most crushing disappointment is the way Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are so poorly used during their time in the film. Jet Li’s role could have been played by anyone. There’s very little he does that requires a master martial artist or an experienced movie star... he’s a prop for the most part, an effect for a good percentage of his screen time, and a cipher from start to finish. Nothing about him makes sense. He knows things he can’t possibly know, unless the film needs him NOT to know them, but there’s logic about how he learns certain key parts of the backstory to things. It’s just poorly thought out, and because Jet’s motivations are so murky in the movie, it’s impossible to fully hate him as a villain or engage with him on a sympathetic level. He’s a blank.
And Michelle Yeoh’s given a more interesting character to play in the film’s opening, but her later work is limited to a few quick scenes and a terribly staged fight with Jet Li that demonstrates that a love of Asian culture does not automatically translate into even the slightest idea of how to stage and photograph a great martial arts fight. Rob Cohen lets down fans of both of these great icons with a confusing and anti-climactic final confrontation that I would have had trouble describing to you even moments after watching it.
Certainly returning stars Brendan Fraser and John Hannah fare better, though, right, along with Maria Bello who stepped in for Rachel Weisz?
Nope. Not really. Fraser is in genuine danger of becoming a joke in these types of films. This and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH both feel like movies he was obligated to make instead of compelled. He has a certain thing he does (YELLING ALL HIS COMEDY LINES) that has definitely turned from style to shtick, and it’s wearying after a while. John Hannah looks stranded here, obviously aware that he’s the comic relief but without anything funny to say or do. He tries to make it work, but Hannah’s only as good as the material he’s given and this... isn’t.
Bello’s going to take a lot of shit for her role in this, and it’s not really her fault. I didn’t realize what a crucial part of the chemistry of the first two movies Weisz was, even as a fan of her work. She and Fraser played off each other in a very particular way. Rachel’s able to play the adventure movie stuff, but she’s still very soft and sweet at the same time. It’s very sexy and appealing, and if you want to see her tapping some of that same vibe, check out the work she does in THE BROTHERS BLOOM once she starts to get involved in the con game. Bello has a flinty sort of strength to her that’s very modern, and as a result, she never really blends correctly into the period of the film. I think she’d probably be great in something like THE KINGDOM or a modern action ensemble film, because she appears to be totally game for it, but the accent plus the chemistry with Fraser plus the period detail... it just doesn’t gel. She’s playing a very different type of ‘40s woman in this film than Weisz was, and I don’t think the script ever really knows what to give her to do.
So even before addressing the larger problems with the film, the cast just doesn’t connect, and that’s really the end of it for me when watching something like this. If I’m not enjoying the cast’s interplay, then all the effects in the world aren’t going to save it for me, and even if the stunts are great, I’m going to miss that connective tissue that makes you give a shit. Thing is... the effects here are inconsistent, with some really nice work and some really not-nice work depending on the scene or the character or the particular gag. And the stunts...
... see, I think I’ve mentioned Vic Armstrong in all the articles I’ve written since that editing room visit, and as excited as I was to see his work here, it’s a wash. I’d have to see the film again to really articulate if it’s the way the action is shot or the way it’s cut or some combination of the two, but this film commits a cardinal sin for an adventure movie: it’s dull. No matter how many things are going on at once onscreen, there’s no visceral charge to it. It’s not involving. It all looks like stuntmen and special effects. You can see the seams. It feels artificial, and as a result, it’s impossible to give yourself over to the thrill ride. There’s a chariot chase through the streets of Hong Kong that should be one of the highlights of the movie, and yet at the end of it, exactly one stunt out of the whole sequence had made any impression on me, and that’s just because Maria’s stuntwoman takes a nasty fall in slow-motion that looks like it must have hurt. It’s not because of any set-up or pay-off in the scene itself. Things happen, but to no end, and so you’re not rooting for any particular outcome.
I think my reaction to this film matches the reactions I’ve read from some people to the PIRATES sequels. I still like those films because I think Verbinski managed to find the energy to every sequence. He gave it all a pulse. They’re inelegantly constructed and unwieldy at times, but they feel alive. The critics of those films called them gaudy and noisy and fake, and watching this film, I know how those people must have felt. More than anything, the returning cast looks fatigued while the new cast looks lost. Luke Ford, playing Fraser’s disturbingly adult son, and Isabella Leong, as his obligatory love interest, are both fairly terrible, and I’m guessing this will remain the sole studio lead on either of their IMDb pages for the foreseeable future. Ford’s a huge guy, and he seems amiable, but he’s shapeless as a performer, and he just doesn’t register. Leong, on the other hand, is terrible. She's crazy hot, but as an actor... wretched. Every single scene with her is wincingly awful. The scenes involving these two remind me of the love stories they would try to work into Marx Brothers movies, where you’d cut to the two young lovers cooing at each other, and it was just a way to kill some time until you got back to the reason you’re there... the freakin’ Marx Brothers. Or, in this case, the monsters and the action.
I wish the monsters were better used, because they are gorgeous as works of design. The Yetis, in particular, frustrate me. They’re beautiful, and the digital characters fairly closely adhere to the designs. It’s impressive. Thing is, just when I started to enjoy them, there’s a moment that is so colossally stupid that it pretty much served as the last nail in the coffin for me. One of the Yetis kicks someone and sends them flying, and another Yeti holds up his arms in the “touchdown” signal. They make a football joke.
Yetis. Living in the Himalayas. In the ‘40s.
No. Really. The key to making this sort of pulp fun is that you have to take it seriously enough that you create a persuasive world. It can be a ridiculous world, but it has to be consistent, and it has to sustain itself. You can’t break the reality like that and expect us to buy into it afterwards. And a choice like that... to actually let a gag like that get from suggestion to previz to rough shot to final render... it’s just a failure of judgment. It says that no one on this picture really bought the world they were creating. And it’s not just that one choice, either... that’s just a really easy example.
I’m sorry this one’s not more fun. I told my parents what I thought of it the other day on the phone, and my mom was particularly distraught. This is exactly the kind of summer fare they love, big escapist fantasy stuff, and they liked the earlier films. I suspect some audiences will give this one a pass because they’re still coasting on the generally good buzz from this summer, but it’s such an avalanche of almosts and bad choices that I really can’t recommend it. What should have been simple, broad fun is sort of a miserable sit, a punishment of sorts. If I was more invested in the MUMMY films overall, I’d call it a crushing disappointment, but as it is, for me, it just stands as an example of potential and energy sadly squandered.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
