Saturday, November 8, 2008

[movie review] The Mummy

and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased. There is a little immaturity stuck away in the crannies of even the most judicious of us, and we should treasure it. (Roger Ebert)

If so, I treasured every moment of this. It's up there with Army of Darkness & Tremors. And sooooo much better than Bubba Ho-Tep. It's Indiana Jones on a "we can't afford Harrison Ford's salary so we spent it on CGI" budget. This wasn't Fraser's first foray into B-grade movies, and I haven't seen Journey to the Center of the Earth yet, but he seems to have turned into a character actor. Not an inherently bad thing, but I wish he'd try something different, to see if he really can do something different. I write this only to discover there's a G.I.Joe movie w/ him coming out next year.

1920's archaeologist messes around with ancient mummy, unleashes plagues and living dead mummy, gets girl, nearly gets girl killed, kills ancient mummy, rescues the damsel, saves the world, lives happily ever after.

The mummy was great (the character). O'Connell, the hero, was exactly what I would expect, excessively well armed with panache. The flesh-eating scarab, when it got an on-camera close-up was really cute. The cat was pretty pathetic, and I think the first one was fake. The slimy assistant evil-doer was waaaay to much of a stereotype. The undead mummy's undead priests were so pathetically 1930s quality. The heroine looked elegantly helpless while waiting to be cannibalized for parts. And of course, the kiss at the end is romantically lit by a setting sun.

This was just fun.

3 - Buy your own on video.

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