Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The Age of Commercialism

Really Surprised!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

In Joseph Boggs' book The Art of Watching Films, Boggs suggests that we should consider the level of ambition of a film in evaluating that film. That is, we shouldn't criticize Sleepless in Seattle for not being Schindler's List. Sleepless in Seattle set out to be a sweet romantic comedy and achieved that goal quite nicely. Stephen Sommers' The Mummy appears to have been spawned with a fairly low level of ambition in mind. The good news(?) is that the director achieved his goal. About the only saving grace of this film is that it doesn't take itself too seriously.The Mummy is loosely based on the Boris Karloff classic from years gone by. Brendan Fraser plays Rick O'Connell, a soldier of fortune, who knows the way to a famous lost city in Egypt. Rachel Wiesz plays Evelyn, a librarian and would-be archaeologist who joins forces with O'Connell and a few other cliches to find the city and uncover hidden treasures. In trying to uncover the treasure they unleash a curse (guess who) and yotta yotta yotta . . . One of the few bright spots in the film is John Hannah in a supporting role as Evelyn's brother. Hannah's previous films include Four Weddings and a Funeral and Sliding Doors. His part is more slapstick sidekick here but he carries it off quite nicely. There are some excellent special effects, but I am frankly more than a little weary of films that put special effects where the plot is supposed to be. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz do okay in their roles, but their roles are really not worth much effort.In the end, The Mummy looks like the offspring of a misbegotten marriage between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, it's not as funny as the latter, nor as exciting as the former, and ends up being a "C minus" grade B film. There are a few scenes that make it inadvisable for kids under thirteen. The rest of the scenes make the film inadvisable for anyone with an IQ greater than that of the average four year-old. Next time out writer-director Sommers would do well to set his sights just a little bit higher.

The mummy is a 1999 film starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah and tells the tale of an Egyptian prince who turns into a mummy and seeks revenge by sucking the life out of humans in order to retain his youth. It's up to a beautiful librarian named Evylnn played by Rachel Weisz,aher brother played by John Hannah and an archalogist named Rick O Connell played by Brendan Fraser they must try and seek the treasure and defeat the mummy who wants Evylnn as his bride. With good special effects, great cast,and a good score this is A lot better than the Tom Cruise one which came out last year.

Amazingly a lot of action, adventure and some fun in it!From beginning to end, The Mummy is very simple, and not one second of it is incomprehensible to a young audience member. The pacing is great; the buildup to the resurrection is actually a great success, and the adventures that ensue are horrifying, hilarious, and adventurous. Brendan Frasier gives a very nice performance as Rick O'Connell, and Rachael Weisz is just as good as Evey. For what he's given, Arnold Vosloo is very menacing as Imhotep, and Oded Fehr's character could have used more screen time to allow us to appreciate him more -- though plenty of that is in the second. The action flows, and is shot very well. The special effects are really good, and I don't think there has ever been a cooler-looking mummy. Jerry Goldsmith's score is decent enough to warrant a buy, though not nearly as sweeping as it could have been, it's still a decent collection of music

This movie is like if you take Raiders of the Lost Ark (and other Indiana Jones movies in general, those serial-tropes) and deduct like 10,000 IQ points from it. It's *so* Raiders, but it's also still, in being true to the original 1932 film, still SO Dracula- rip-off in some ways, even down to Kevin J O'Connor (OH MY GOD NOT- HENRY_PLAINVIEW from TWWB!) playing Renfield to Arnold Vosloo's Imhotep (though Renfield crossed with Alfred Molina from Raiders- did I mention this is RAIDERS with like a lot of dumbness injected in?) It's a slam-bang action movie where half of the dialog are full-on *Movie* lines. You know the ones? This is where characters, especially Brendan Fraser (who, honestly, is having the time of his life in this role), spout off a lot of clichés - Rick makes sure to say "We're in deep trouble" more than once, or to be ready with a line while being tossed conveniently across the room of the inside of a pyramid. And characters just do dumb thing after dumb thing, or characters appear where they shouldn't but hey gotta advance the plot... like the whole entire group of dumb American cowboys(!?) who manage to make it off of the boat that catches on fire and while we get scenic views of Fraser and Weisz and her brother going across the desert, the rest are not to be seen... until convenient.Oh, Rachel Weisz, by the way, is a great thing about this movie. Really, she's the one who practically got a career off of this movie, and she is so incredibly charming and dorky (the scene where she gets drunk is a different kind of drunk scene than we get in Raiders with Marion, I should note). She may be a "Damsel" occasionally in distress, but she is acting Evelyn on a wavelength that gives the movie an energy and delight that helps to balance out all of the stock actors and characters surrounding her (even O'Connor, who is giving this one- note weasel his all, is that). She and Fraser have the kind of old-time Hollywood chemistry, with enough modernity, that makes the movie watchable even as it gets so.... so.... so.... so... so dumb.And yet... it's entertaining. It's occasionally cheesy and haphazard - my God, does that climax where every single thing seems to come alive, usually by mistake - and I neglect to note how, despite being from old Egyptian lore (even if that's lore taken from older movies and serials), it also borrows in one giant chunk from the Evil Dead. But... well, I kept watching and not simply because I had to for an upcoming podcast.PS: Spoiler -about O'Connor's Beni... near the end, they really didn't know what to do with him, did they? I mean the writers; he's about ready to escape on the camel, he has a good amount of gold after getting away with being a conniving creep... but he sticks around and goes back inside, and as soon as he does we know exactly what's coming for him. The movie also goes the extra step of showing us how he meets his maker. It feels oddly cruel though, despite how slimy he's been. I almost felt sorry for him or even something close to sympathy. Isn't it enough to assume he's squashed with everything else inside the pyramid once it collapses? Like anything else here, it's overkill.