The Mummy

Score:  C-

Directed by Alex Kurtzman
Starring Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe
Running time: 107 minutes
Rated PG-13

Long Story Short:  The Mummy is a reboot of the famous franchise as well as the potential start of a whole series of monster movies.  If this is the best they can do, though, any plans for a new series are DOA.  Tom Cruise headlines, and he's one of the best action actors we've got, but he's just not a good fit here and can't pull the rest of the film up.  There are admittedly a few good scenes, but everything's smushed together in such a generic, nonsensical (and ultimately boring) way that it doesn't matter.  Skip.


A pair of rogue military officers, Nick Morton (Cruise) and Chris Vail (Johnson), enter an isolated Iraqi village hoping to pillage artifacts, only to come under attack by insurgents.  An airstrike saves them, and also reveals a buried tomb.  The military calls in archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Wallis) to examine the find, and the team carries away a mysterious sarcophagus.  En route to England, a series of bizarre events causes the plane to crash; while Halsey parachutes out, Nick and Chris are apparently killed.  Except that Morton somehow wakes the next day without a scratch.  Jenny and Nick investigate the crash site, finding that the sarcophagus's inhabitant, Ahmanet (Boutella) has been resurrected and seems particularly intent on getting to Nick.  The pair desperately flee Ahmanet, with the help of some new friends, as they try to figure out what is going on - and how to put a stop to the supernatural threat.

The Mummy has a talented cast, but many of the roles are poor fits and the performances are adversely affected.  Tom Cruise plays the lead, as dependable an action star as there is.  However, he isn't nearly as good as usual here.  He is what he is at this point in his career; while he awkwardly attempts to add some humorous mischief to the part (at least early on), it just isn't a good fit and so his character isn't as fun as usual.  His partner in crime, Annabelle Wallis as Jenny, is even worse, unfortunately.  I haven't seen her in much else so I don't know if this is an anomaly for her, but Wallis's personality is so generic and bland, and even her basic reactions to situations so off, that she is essentially just a drag on the movie.  Russell Crowe is fine in a small role, but the part itself is mostly a distraction (more later).  Sofia Boutella comes out the best of the main cast, a convincingly creepy, menacing, but occasionally even seductive, villain.  Her success with the physicality of the role is a major reason for it.  Not much else to speak of, but Jake Johnson, normally a reliably hilarious comedian, just does not do a great job here with his role as a (temporary) sidekick.

The Mummy is a failure of an action-adventure film - not truly terrible in any one way, but successful only in a very few.  I haven't seen the old-school Mummy films, but I couldn't stop myself from comparing this to the Brendan Fraser-led version from 1999.  This version attempts the same goofy-serious split that the 1999 version succeeded at so well, but it fails pretty badly early on and essentially quits trying after that.  While The Mummy is the definition of a monster movie, it's still important to have some connection with the characters and plot.  Unfortunately the characters are hampered not just by poor casting fits but also by lack of time to learn about them or reason to care about them.  It's just one action set piece leading to the next, by varying degrees of inexplicability.  Then a "universe" concept springs in the middle of the film, as Crowe's character, Dr. Jekyll (...), shows up as the man in charge of investigating monsters like Ahmanet.  This both doesn't really go anywhere yet also messes up any remaining focus in the movie.  While there are some reasonably entertaining scenes in the first half of the movie - the plane crash, Nick and Jenny's first encounter with Ahmanet in England - it all ends in a big, dull, predictable blockbuster finale.

***

The Mummy is a dud of a summer popcorn film, and is particularly disastrous as an attempted first step in a new monster movie "universe".  Usually the presence of Tom Cruise provides a decently high floor for the entertainment level of a movie, but even he can't save this.  While the remaining casting was even more middling (at best), the true fault is in the overall story, script, and directing (all of which can seemingly be blamed on Kurtzman, but I wouldn't be surprised if the studio brass had a hand in it).  They didn't find anything interesting to focus on, or even a particular tone or style, to separate itself from others or justify its existence.  The filmmaker tries to hide this (intentionally or not) by ramming all its loosely related components together and hoping that you won't think about it too much.  Well, I certainly won't be thinking about going to any sequels to this flop.




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