THE MUMMY (1999) ¢ 1/2
D: Stephen Sommers
Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah,
Arnold Vosloo, Kevin J. O'Connor, Jonathan Hyde
A pointless remake of the 1932 horror classic about an ancient Egyptian high priest who comes back to life after 3,000 years as a corpse and unlocks an ancient curse, hoping to resurrect his long-dead mate. The trailer for this looked promising, but the movie's a flop, an obvious Indiana Jones rip-off in which Brendan Fraser proves he's not Harrison Ford, Arnold Vosloo proves he's not Boris Karloff, and Stephen Sommers proves that Steven Spielberg has nothing to worry about. The script's anachronistic, the one-liners are terrible, the continuity defies logic, and the computer-generated monsters don't look any more convincing than their analog counterparts did decades before. Jerry Goldsmith's music is good, but even that's derived from other Goldsmith scores. If you're looking for a little mummified Halloween horror, skip this and watch the Karloff version instead.
