For a stretch of The Mummy, Tom Cruise’s
Nick Morton asks over and over, “That’s really your plan?” like he just can’t
believe it. And that’s essentially my reaction to Universal’s latest attempt to
kick off their “Dark Universe” where they reboot all their classic monster
movie properties with modern action spectacle trappings. 2014’s
Dracula Untold was a failed first endeavor, and I can’t help
but wonder if this uninspiring re-launch will meet a similar fate.
I’m not going to say this is an ill-advised venture,
especially because I actually love the idea of a connected universe of big, fun
adventure movies full of those iconic cinematic creatures. Not everything needs
to be a sprawling, Marvel-esque world, but what the hell, it’s going to happen
anyway, and I’ve heard way worse ideas. Alex Kurtzman’s The
Mummy, however, is not a great start. It’s like the Brendan Fraser
re-do, only with less adventure, grandeur, and smarts. (Yeah, I know.)
An unnecessarily convoluted plot boils down to Tom Cruise—as
previously mentioned, his character goes by the moniker Nick Morton, but really
plays Tom Cruise—unleashes an angry ancient mummy, Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), and must rectify his mistake so she doesn’t wreak all manner of
havoc and chaos upon the world. He attempts to accomplish this chiefly by
sprinting away from various threats in true Tom Cruise fashion and looking
completely dumfounded. Along for the ride are a generic damsel-in-distress love
interest (Annabelle Wallis) and a wacky sidekick (Jake Johnson), who spends
most of the movie as a ghost only Nick can see.
The script from David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, and
Dylan Kussman (as well as three additional individuals with “screen story by”
credits) does everything possible to make Nick unlikable. He’s a philanderer, a
petty thief, and the whole basis of the character is that he steals antiquities
and sells them on the black market. Cruise clearly has a good time playing a
bit of an ass, but that’s all he really is: a tepid jerk who’s really not that
bad and a watered-down, PG-13 version of a person who would do these things in
real life.
There’s no way around it, The Mummy is
dumb. For a moment in the middle, it appears to know just how dumb it actually
is and that it’s going to steer into the skid. That could have been a blast.
Cruise is affable enough, though his star doesn’t shine as bright as usual;
Johnson does his shtick, which I enjoy, especially as he doesn’t often overstay
his welcome from scene to scene; and some of the action isn’t bad. There’s a
kickass underwater scene, and Tom Cruise fist fighting a cadre of headless
undead corpses is as entertaining as it sounds. (Some of the action, however,
does not measure up.)
The characters are nothing. Especially the women, who have little
to work with. Wallis exists so Nick can pull her out of one perilous situation
after another. When Boutella has free reign to chew on the scenery and unleash
her powers as the over-the-top creature, she’s actually pretty fun to watch.
Unfortunately, she spends most of the movie chained up or otherwise restrained
to the point where the whole thing feels like an allegory for society’s hatred
and subjugation of strong, smart, powerful women. (And like the movie thinks
that’s supposed to be a good thing? Maybe I’m just making that up, but Kurtzman
is a well-known 9/11 truther, so I can’t put anything past him.)
There’s no emotional investment in any element of the film,
but this still could have been a big, goofy summer adventure. Instead, however,
it’s soooo boring. The Mummy starts with leaden exposition
and voice over from Russell Crowe’s Dr. Henry Jekyll (yep) then moves
immediately into more exposition, and frequently takes breaks for even more
plodding explanations. In fact, every time Crowe shows up on screen, the momentum
dies as he yammers on endlessly, expounding on faux-deep ideas about the nature
of evil and similar tedious nonsense. Even Jekyll’s action scene sucks.
Worse still, this heavy-handed approach to world-building
where they detail every last thing is unnecessary. As Nick first enters Prodigium—the
central base for what is sure to house a cadre of future monster fighters in
the Dark Universe—he sees a vampire skull, a preserved hand that looks
suspiciously like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and more nods to classic
monsters we’re slated to see on-screen soon.
That strategy actually works pretty well to create the sense
that there’s a much larger world with much more going on than meets the eye.
But spelling it all out in minute detail no only kills the pace, it shows an
inherent distrust in the audience to make those connections on our own. I don’t
expect a ton of subtlety and nuance in a big budget studio tentpole with six
writers, but it feels like they’re saying we’re too dumb to understand what’s
going on.
Mindless is one thing, but stupid and regressive are
something else entirely. We get glimpses of what The Mummy
could have been, but what we ultimately see is bland at best, and tedious and
distasteful at worst. Universal pinned big hopes and dreams to this, but I don’t
see any world where Wonder Woman doesn’t crush it into
oblivion at the box office this weekend, and rightly so. The studio has grand
plans, but if The Mummy crashes and burns, it’ll be back to
the drawing board, where they’ve already been multiple times trying to launch
this world. [Grade: C-]
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