The Mummy (1999)

This looked just good enough that I accepted an invitation to see it in a theater with a group, but when it was sold out, I didn't try again. My interest increased slightly after I watched the 1932 movie, which wasn't what I expected and bears only a passing resemblance to this alleged remake. I finally saw it mainly because I'm having trouble finding enough promising horrors for the month.

In 1926, Egyptologists discover a map to the ruins of a fictitious city, Hamunaptra, which I initially misheard as "Hymenoptera." Two teams race to grab as much treasure from it as possible, whether for history or just money. The educated if clumsy Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) makes the mistake of reading a magic book aloud, which brings new life to dishonored priest Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo). Like Frank in Hellraiser (no wonder the producers wanted Clive Barker to direct), Imhotep becomes less decayed the more he kills. Don't think he'll stop once complete, either: He plans to make Evelyn a vessel to resurrect his princess paramour (Patricia Velásquez), and he casts some of the Ten Plagues in a bid for followers. (Whose idea was it to grant superpowers in a curse, anyway?)

In truth, we don't see Imhotep in living mummy form until the 122 minutes are about half over. First we spend a while meeting the explorers, few of whom are admirable or likable. Top billing goes to Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell, who's enough of a scoundrel that Evelyn barely saves him from execution just so he'll help reach Hamunaptra, but the two gradually fall for each other. Her brother Jonathan (John Hannah) is a drunken pickpocket. Beni Gabor (Kevin O'Connor) is a dirty coward even before he serves Imhotep. You get the idea. No other actor names ring a bell for me.

Indeed, my hangup going in was a sense of typical '90s Hollywood schlock. Not only are characters dopey, cookie-cutter, and often ethnically miscast; it's mostly easy to predict who will survive and who won't. Naming the villain after one of the greatest ancient Egyptians is bad enough, albeit in keeping with the '32 predecessor. Just as well that I didn't watch right after my first viewing of The Matrix.

That said, there is a slight downside to watching on YouTube as I did: no subtitles for foreign languages, even with closed captioning. It hardly matters most of the time, but if I hadn't heard my sister talk about a scene, I would have missed the detail that Imhotep appreciates Beni's Hebrew.

Is the flick scary? Well, more so than with a nearly harmless Boris Karloff. But horror isn't even among the genres listed on its IMDb page. It seems to take more cues from Indiana Jones, combining old-fashioned adventure fantasy with ghastly yet PG-13 fates and plenty of comic relief.

At best, TM might be on par with one of the lesser Jones entries. I doubt I'll see a sequel, but it was OK to fill my evening.