{"id":4111,"date":"2024-09-18T20:49:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4111"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:48:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:48:37","slug":"the-mummy-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/18\/the-mummy-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mummy (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Mummy <\/strong>(2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, action and scary images, some suggestive content, partial nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alex Kurtzman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Brian Tyler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ben Seresin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 9, 2017 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari, Russell Crowe.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $80.2M (US)\/$410M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: NO STARS!!!<\/p>\n

\u00a0It took God six days to create the universe and only two hours for the makers of The Mummy<\/strong> to destroy the Dark Universe. Who\u2019s the real miracle worker?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Mummy<\/strong> is Universal\u2019s inaugural entry in a proposed series of reboots of the studio\u2019s classic monster movies- e.g. Dracula, Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc.- but after what I just witnessed, I have a feeling we\u2019ve seen the final entry. This movie is an incredible piece of crap! They couldn\u2019t have gotten it more wrong even if it was intentional which it\u2019s not. Everybody takes themselves way too seriously in this loud, murky, incomprehensible noisefest. It\u2019s not even a fraction of the fun of the Brendan Fraser trilogy that mixed horror with Indiana Jones-like adventure. This new version of The Mummy<\/strong> tries to shoehorn huge action set-pieces into the horror and comes up short in every imaginable way. It\u2019s a mess of a movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tom Cruise stars as soldier-for-hire\/looter Nick Morton (\u201cmort\u201d as in muerte<\/em>, get it?), an unscrupulous fellow we first meet engaging in battle with a bunch of Iraqi insurgents. It\u2019s not for love of country but rather love of money. He and his partner Chris Vail (Johnson, New Girl) are searching for treasure using a map Nick stole from his former lover, archeologist Jenny Halsey (Wallis, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword). They end up discovering the tomb of Ahmanet (Boutella, Kingsman: The Secret Service), an Egyptian princess who\u2019s been erased from historical records for treachery. It seems that she was heir to the throne of her father King Menehptre until his second wife bore him a son. Enraged, she sells her soul to the god of death Set and murders her entire family. For her crimes, she\u2019s mummified alive and buried far away from Egypt which explains why she was unearthed in Iraq.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Her sarcophagus is loaded on a plane to England and that\u2019s when all hell breaks loose. Ahmanet takes possession of Chris who attempts to open the sarcophagus. When Nick shoots him dead, a huge wave of crows attacks the plane and it crashes but not before Nick saves Jenny\u2019s life by giving her the only parachute. Everybody dies in the crash, but Nick comes back to life in the morgue a day later. It seems he\u2019s now cursed and the princess wants to use his body as a vessel for Set who she plans to resurrect.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What I just gave you is a basic outline of The Mummy<\/strong>. There are other plot points like a sacred dagger, a mass grave under London containing the bodies of Crusaders and Dr. Henry Jekyll (Crowe, Gladiator). He\u2019s the head of some secret society that hunts down monsters and other supernatural threats. As it so happens, Jenny is one of his agents. Jekyll\u2019s men bring Nick to his secret lair under the Natural History Museum in London where he reveals his plans for Nick. They\u2019re not good. There\u2019s a lot going on in The Mummy<\/strong> and yet it\u2019s still boring. To misquote Shakespeare, it\u2019s a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. It\u2019s also idiotic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cruise gives his worse performance to date which is saying a lot; despite a handful of good performances (usually opposite veteran actors like Paul Newman and Jack Nicholson), he\u2019s a very one-note actor who can\u2019t stop playing the same cocky character he played in Top Gun more than 30 years ago. Tom, you\u2019re 54 now, it\u2019s time to grow up and play age-appropriate roles. I can accept him in the Mission Impossible movies for the same reason I accepted Charles Bronson in the last three Death Wish flicks. But as a soldier fighting in Iraq? Please! But it goes beyond age. His character type is a bad fit for a so-called horror movie. Wallis delivers an equally bad performance as the female-in-distress\/love interest\/secret anti-evil agent\/archeologist\/whatever. She\u2019s mainly in the movie to be rescued by Nick time and time again. Her line readings are as stiff as starched boxer shorts. Boutella is wasted as Ahmanet but there\u2019s a question of whether or not her \u201cperformance\u201d qualifies as one since her character is mainly CGI. As for Crowe, he\u2019s just in it for the paycheck. Like everybody else (on-screen AND in the theater), he doesn\u2019t look like he\u2019s having any fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The CGI in The Mummy<\/strong> is terrible. These days, that\u2019s par for the course. Summer movies have become these massive assault vehicles that try and do permanent damage to the senses. There\u2019s a sequence where the princess creates a huge sandstorm that destroys half of London (the half not destroyed in last year\u2019s London Has Fallen). It feels more like something out of a Michael Bay movie than a horror film. This movie is also very loud. And profoundly stupid. Some of the dialogue is just painful. At one point, Jenny tells Nick that they\u2019ve angered the gods. I felt like shouting, \u201cSo have the writers!\u201d Other choice lines include non-bon mots like \u201cThis isn\u2019t a tomb, it\u2019s a prison\u201d, \u201cThe very essence of evil calls to you now\u201d and \u201cYou have no idea what you have unleashed\u201d. The writers even crib a line from Bride of Frankenstein when Jekyll tells Nick, \u201cWelcome to a new world of gods and monsters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Mummy<\/strong> is bad in so many ways, it\u2019s virtually impossible to list them all. The narrative is muddled and incoherent. The cinematography is dark and murky; at times, it\u2019s hard to see what\u2019s going on. This is bad because many scenes take place underground, in tombs and other badly lit places. There\u2019s not a single original idea. The Mummy<\/strong> borrows from so many other better movies that one gets the impression the script was cut-and-pasted rather than written. They even steal the dead friend coming back from the grave to offer advice bit from An American Werewolf in London. That would be Jake Johnson, a fine comic actor gone to waste in this horrible excuse for a movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Alex Kurtzman (People Like Us) is credited as director, but one gets the impression that he merely oversaw the mess on behalf of Universal execs. It\u2019s so bad, it makes any Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser look like a cinematic masterpiece, even the one with The Rock. Hell, it makes any of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy movies from the 60s look good by comparison. The Mummy<\/strong> is easily and by far, the worst movie of the year (so far). On the upside, at least it took 2017 almost six months to drop its first \u201cNO STARS!!!\u201d movie.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mummy (2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, action and scary images, some suggestive content, partial nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alex Kurtzman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Brian Tyler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ben Seresin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 9, 2017 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-sequels-remakes","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/The-Mummy-2017-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5509,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111\/revisions\/5509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}