The “Mummy” reboot from 1999, directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser, was kind of fun. We can also look forward to new visits from Frankenstein’s monster and his bride, the Wolf Man and the Invisible Man, among others.
“The Mummy” is the first of a slew - a swarm? a pestilence? - of features reviving those old creatures, including the one from the Black Lagoon.
#THE MUMMY MOVIE REVIEW FULL#
Universal, lacking a mighty superhero franchise, has gone into its intellectual-property files, which are full of venerable monsters, and created a commercial agglomeration it calls the Dark Universe. I’m not an Egyptologist, but it seems just as likely that those words were lifted from a movie-studio strategy memo. “The Mummy” begins with a supposed Egyptian proverb to the effect that “we” never really die “we” assume new forms and keep right on living. If you have no choice but to see it - a circumstance I have trouble imagining - you can start in on your drinking that much sooner. Simple math will tell you how much better this movie is than that one. That is about 20 minutes shorter than “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” about which I had some unkind things to say a couple of weeks ago. So I will say this in favor of “The Mummy”: It is 110 minutes long.
There’s no great joy in accentuating the negative. If I followed that rule, I’d be unemployed. You’ve no doubt been told that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all.