Friday, June 9, 2017

"The Mummy" review



The Dark Universe succeeds in engendering perverse fascination.


The first five to ten minutes of Universal’s 2017 reboot of their classic horror film franchise, “The Mummy” is just about the perfect summation of the film that anybody could possibly ask for.

After transitioning from the Universal Studios logo to the proudly displayed logo of their currently nonexistent “Dark Universe” line of films, the movie cuts to an exposition dump regarding the discovery of a tomb of ancient crusaders in subterranean tunnels of London via news reports.

The subsequent sequence of workers exploring said ruins is then cut off by the sudden arrival of armed forces and archaeologists arriving to seize control over the area before Russell Crowe enters to be briefed on the secured status of the tomb, after which he begins to exposit the legend of the cursed mummy Princess Ahmanet, which then cuts to her tombs accidental discovery by soldier of fortune Nick Morton (Tom Cruise).

The film essentially frames its story through an exposition dump that has nothing to do with its plot, in order to set up a flash back in a setting with little to do with its subject matter, before transitioning to the actual plot of the film, the crux of which, was an accident regarding events that are completely divorced from the movies own mythology.

If that doesn’t quite demonstrate just how far up its own ass the head of “The Mummy (2017)” is, then by all means, stay for the subsequent show of tonal whiplash that has the balls to call itself the beginning of a cinematic universe.

The best way to really describe this film is condescendingly adorable. The set up for a cinematic universe themed around the Universal Monsters was a bizarre concept for the modern landscape to begin with but the effort expended by the folks at Universal to make the audience think that it should care is so pathetic that it almost wraps around into being endearing.

On its own merits, “The Mummy (2017)” is simply a bad movie; all of the individual aspects of action, comedy, character and horror, contributed through tight direction, solid set pieces and atmosphere are actually surprisingly decent in their individual execution but completely fail to play off of one another well. As a result of this bad coordination, scenes fall flat left and right while the editing of the second half of the movie more or less completely breaks down into a borderline incomprehensible mess.

In its attempts to set up some sort of grander mythology however, the film's utter sincerity and cheekiness in thinking that an organization named Prodigium led by Dr. Jekyll that hunts monsters is a cool response to the impact of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so laughable the whole thing starts to feel like a parody of current Hollywood blockbuster trends.

In a desperation to chase the shared continuity format for concepts that really don’t suit it well, Universal has launched a cinematic universe whose inaugural entry is a compelling writer’s exercise in seeing what would happen if you made just about every possible mistake in launching a franchise at the concept level.

All of these baffling structural problems don’t even scratch the surface of the primary issues with the film at face value. Tom Cruise puts his all into embracing a truly roguish and unlikable profiteering scumbag of a lead but he’s so underwritten with little to do outside of react to action that you barely even remember what his character is supposed to be by the third act of the movie. His romantic lead, played by Annabelle Wallis, gives an embarrassingly wooden performance of a supposed agent of Prodigium that communicates competence through stoicism rather than doing anything intelligent or knowledgeable, leading to bizarre contradictions within the status of her character’s faith in all of this supernatural nonsense that’s actually occurring.

The biggest waste however, unfortunately goes to Sophia Boutella, who puts in an excellently convincing and even three dimensional performance as the titular monster of the movie, that is unfortunately undercut by the films own inconsistencies. The absurdity of her existence, capabilities, and obsession with Cruise for freeing her that manifests as an oddly ritualistic lust are regularly highlighted for humorous purposes that don’t feed well into the tension of the action sequences or dread of the horror focused portions of the movie.

What few components of the film actually work are hampered by their inability to play well with the others, and nowhere else is this more apparent than with Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll, who performs admirably and desperately tries to steal a show that doesn’t belong to him only to be shoved out of the way by Cruise’s performance that boils down the mimicking the audience’s look of confusion at how overly convoluted such a simple premise should be and a premature show of Jekyll’s dual identity nature that comes so out of left field it could have been removed from the movie entirely without making any other edits.

Through all of the decision making that led to “The Mummy (2017)” being such a train wreck however, perhaps the most tragic and damning thing about the final product however is that all of the content conceived of within this movie could have been kept intact and still produced a solid individual film while hinting at an interesting franchise to come.

The concept of Cruise’s character being touched by destiny thanks to the curse placed upon him by the Mummy could have been a cool set up to a series of horror themed adventure films regarding a man’s attempts to fend off the supernatural world that he’s been exposed to in a global scale quest that puts him at cross roads with monsters of legend. It could have been the best John Constantine/Hellblazer adaptation never created.

 Or, failing the route of doing something that different, it could have at the very least remained a sequence of contemporary monster remakes that share background elements until a unique adventure film came to fruition that could make use of the growing mythology stuffed in by Prodigium.

For what it’s worth however, taking the low road didn’t make “The Mummy (2017)” much less of an entertaining film. Of inferior quality so as to be an unintentionally funny and perversely fascinating masterpiece? Most certainly, but the entertainment value is certainly their if you’re into studio decision making gone hilariously wrong.


3 Bizarrely Located Ancient Tombs out of 10

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