‘The Mummy’ opening this weekend is a big tub of greasy popcorn fun starring Tom Cruise. This new take on the classic tale is filled with some twists and revamping of the core story.
Whether you are intricately aware of the original Universal Mummy films or the later ones starring Brendan Fraser this foray earnestly tries to incorporate new story elements including a female mummy, and Cruise playing a character with questionable morals.
Sidekick to Cruise is “New Girl” star, Jake Johnson who brings an excellent amount of levity to the story that seems to break up some of the action and dark scenes with solid laugh out loud moments that mostly work even when the dialogue gets cheesy. His character is often the voice of reason even when Cruise’s wants to go off the deep end.
In an attempt to provide context and avoid one and two dimensional characters ‘The Mummy” has two prologues which is kind of different but smart considering this is an action led narrative. Both mini stories do help establish Russell Crowe’s surprising character, but more importantly, gives motivation for Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) as she becomes a mummy for crimes she committed. Unfortunately, even with these added character prologues, both still rise to just being two dimensional.
While Admanet’s motivation is clearly set on power we don’t get to see much else of what makes her tick. To be a great villain a story needs to show more depth and this is one of the reasons “The Mummy” is more fluff than substance. In the same vein, is Russell Crowe’s character (intentionally leaving out his name). He’s a bit ambiguous and the character creates more questions than answers. This may be intentional, as I would assume to see him showing up in the “Dark Universe” films that will be featuring other Universal monsters like Dracula and Wolfman. Look for Easter Eggs in the workshop and office hinting at other famous creatures (they are not obvious).
One of the major action sequences that takes place is when the cargo plane crashes as seen in the trailers. The work that went into the scene almost makes the entire film worth going to see as well as some underwater sequences. Cruise loves his action and in that he totally delivers in this film.
“The Mummy” isn’t going to win a bunch of awards in the story or acting department. However, that doesn’t mean that it still can’t be fun. Cruise delivers on what he’s known for, bigger than life stories with gigantic incredible action scenes. For many that’s enough to make an outing to the theater worth the effort. The story does do some different things with the classic Mummy tale but the choices for some will be predictable. Those who love the traditional creature feature of yester year won’t mind but those looking for substance will find it difficult when the narrative plays second fiddle to expansive action scenes.
Final Verdict: 3 out of 5
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Rating: PG-13
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Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama, Horror
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Directed By: Alex Kurtzman
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Written By: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman
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In Theaters: Jun 9, 2017 Wide
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Runtime:120 minutes
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Studio: Universal