st. brendan fraser, rachel weisz , arnold vosloo, kevin j. o'connor, odeh fehr
Perhaps my most vivid recollection of the entire experience is the odd five minutes or so sitting inside the darkened theatre, waiting for the film to start, all the while absent-mindedly flipping my ticket in nervous hands. If my life depended on it, I probably couldn't tell you a single thing that went through my head in those precious few moments. Just the sensation of that blasted tic running itself through muscle – compelling me to flip, over and over and over again – as other people scooted along the aisles and sat and patiently slurped their cokes.Forget for a moment the mantra of impartiality. Here's the mark of a really good reviewer – he or she can usually tell you, within an inch this way or that, how a new movie is going to play out. A bomb? A hit? A lukewarm, middle-of-the-way event? It's like professional gambling, in a way. There's an undeniable feeling one gets just before another hit of blackjack, or as the slot machine lever pumps into place. In that split-second glimmer just before the hand is shown, before the wheels come up, before the film credits roll, a good reviewer will find himself nailing the head of that screaming, writhing, slippery movie before him. Screw genuine surprise.
Sitting in that theatre, waiting for The Mummy to begin, I had no such intuition. My mind was a vacuous blank. I never saw the curtains pull away to reveal the wider screen, and I barely even blinked as the previews for Instinct and Entrapment flew by like bullets.
After the movie, I came out a changed man.
Not just changed. Utterly transformed, transfixed, stunned by what the studio and actors and FX technicians had accomplished in their mad scramble for the top of the blockbuster food chain.
I had gone in to see a movie and came out, instead, affirmed to have seen possibly the finest case of social experimentation yet put on screen. How else would you describe a movie that couldn't decide whether it was mind candy or tribute? It's clear that the producers didn't know. Or maybe they were cynical enough to think that it could roll along with the best of both worlds - a little bit of this, a little bit of that, enough to keep everyone happy. Like Pilate before them, they washed their hands clean of the affair and sent the movie out to the masses with both halves intact. I'm sorry folks, but it just doesn't work that way.
The experiment was interesting, and not necessarily bad, if it had been pulled off with a certain grace. Certainly, I was buoyed by the opulence of the opening sequences – the mysterious and deep-voiced narrator, the CG vistas stunt-doubling for an ancient Egyptian city, the South American actor stunt-doubling for Billy Zane (okay, so I'm being flippant here). With a smile and a wink, I watched the director watch his actors watch the blue screens as they performed passionate pantomimes of 1930s pulp and early horror flicks. The smile became a little frozen when irony gave way to mindless gun battles in the middle of the Saharan desert. And it fractured a notch more when the mousy librarian heroine of the film failed to balance herself on the upright end of an unsupported ladder - the only reason being so that she could topple shelf after shelf of carefully-stacked books. Slapstick? I paid money for slapstick?
The tug-of-war affected by The Mummy is, in a perverse way, fun to watch. It is fun in the same way that a person might like to watch from the distance of a sidewalk, as relatives grapple with a schizophrenic uncle amidst the blare of incoming traffic.
On the one hand, the props, the costumes, the use of camels, the sense of adventure, mysticism, swashbuckling and menace, all conspire to give a sense of delightful mood. It gleans the nostalgia of period movies with enthusiasm and verve. We could even excuse some of the hokey dialogue and predictable plot twists as having been borrowed from these times. Buried treasure, camel-ride races, librarians revealing themselves to be part of secret societies, librarians declaring themselves adventurers, librarians reveling in their librarian-ness when drunk. Get in the spirit of things, chum.
On the other hand, the motivation – the soul and energy of the piece – belong completely to the nineties. The performers carry themselves with an earnestness that is, unfortunately, swallowed whole by the fact that sixty-seven years' worth of acting theory have passed since the original Mummy. Brendan Fraser is well suited to the role of protagonist, where he is often funny and shows a surprising prowess at adaptation. If he had been an action star in the sense of Errol Flynn, he might even have succeeded in gluing together the movie single-handedly. Unfortunately, he is not; and furthermore, his earnest attempts are undermined by director Stephen Somners himself. Every time Fraser coaxed me into relaxing, the movie suddenly switched into a bad parody of contemporary action hero antics. Fraser blowing away bad guys with two-guns (ala John Woo). Fraser emptying his clips, pulling out another two guns from his belt, then another two from his back after that (ala the Matrix). Fraser running gung-ho with his last pair of weapons (ala Bruce Willis), which fortunately never seem to run out of ammo as he clears a burning ship. This last point proved of great consternation to me, since I had a tacit understanding that the word 'six-shooters' implied they could only hold six rounds in the chamber.
The rest of the cast proved to be a rather irritating mix. Arnold Vosloo delivered a certain oomph to the title character of the film, while the ominous Odeh Fehr gave his best as the leader of a quasi-mystical warrior sect. Less should be said about Rachel Weisz, who remained consistently unsympathetic, and oddly out of sync with her fellow actors throughout the movie. John Hannah coasted through his part with barely a twitch or change in facial expression. This was particularly confusing since his character underwent so many unexplained transformations – fop, thief, scoundrel, cheater, expert hieroglyphics reader, and hero. It would have been nice if he had decided to expend some energy on the part rather than just take the money and run. As for Kevin J. O'Connor – as the slimy, irascible Benny – I have to say he made me laugh the most (particularly the scene in which he tries to stave off the mummy with an assortment of cheap religious trinkets), but I have to deduct points for his irritating accent and even more for his one dimensional character. Come to think of it, there are enough ethnic and movie cliches in The Mummy to fill the Oxford dictionary or re-ignite Desert Storm, whichever happens to come first.
The lack of narrative coherency also strikes a nerve. The last time we see Odeh Fehr's character, for instance, he is fighting off a hoard of mummies and urging Fraser to save himself, blah blah blah, ad nauseam. Then, at the end of the movie, he inexplicably appears again to bestow his blessing upon the survivors. Huh? I would have liked at least some kind of explanation, no matter how insipid or manufactured.
What about the quicksand that waits until Fraser has escaped before swallowing up an airplane and its remaining passenger? Come to think of it, how did Fraser escape, on foot and without supplies, at the beginning of the movie? Why, oh why, did the mummy take the eyes of the only person who needed glasses like an alcoholic needs a drink? When the biblical plagues struck Egypt, I spotted the darkness and plague and locusts and fire, but where was the death of every first-born son? It would have been a convenient way to bump off Hannah.
In the end, like all true experiments, this one had mixed results. When the next occasion to bury a time capsule comes by, I'll put my vote down for a bootleg version of The Mummy, because it's much easier than fitting copies of Lawrence of Arabia, the Indiana Jones trilogy, Aliens, Bram Stroker's Dracula and Lost in Space in. I suggest you rent these movies, or even the 1932 Boris Karloff version of The Mummy if you're cheeky enough.
adrian gunadi
comments? email the author