Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
September, 1998. That was when we first started writing about Stephen Sommers and Universal and their new MUMMY franchise. It’s hard to believe we’re now on the eve of the release of a sequel already. You gotta hand it to these guys... if nothing else, they’re efficient.
September’s when I first remember hearing about Harry’s trip to London to visit the sets of the original film. It was one of the first times he went on a major studio-funded junket trip like that. His description of the film got me interested enough to start poking around for more information, culminating in my very first use of my Time Machine. I published my final review of the film the week of its release, and my feelings about it are largely unchanged since then. It’s not a film I spend much time rewatching, but I enjoyed it enormously on its own terms in the theater. That’s why I may have sounded particularly pissy when I wrote an advance script review of what was called at that point THE MUMMY 2. I was disappointed that it seemed to be nothing but set pieces tied together with the most paper thin of dialogue. Stephen Sommers took the time to speak to Harry about what I read, which turned out to be more of a detailed written pitch than an actual script draft. Once I heard that, I decided to just play wait and see with the picture. After all, if I enjoyed the first one, shouldn’t I expect the same creative team to come up with something equally fun the second time?
One of the things I like about Stephen Sommers is his sense of almost total abandon in the way his films are built. He’s not what I’d call reserved. There are several stretches of what seems like 20 minutes or more of pure action in THE MUMMY RETURNS, nothing but gag after gag after gag. In a way, it’s exhausting, but it certainly delivers on the promise of a pure popcorn summer film.
And isn’t that the point? I mean, this weekend is the beginning of May, the beginning of the summer movie season, and just as the first MUMMY kicked off 1999’s summer with a bang of big-budget FX, this one should do exactly the same. It’s funny... when I read the “written pitch,” I criticized the film for the exact things that play like assets onscreen. It starts in what feels like the middle of another movie, and it never stops to catch its breath from there. Here’s the glib description I originally ran:
”We learn at the beginning of the film that it's been eight years since the original. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have a kid now. He's your standard issue wise-ass kid who knows everything and is always getting into wild and wacky trouble. They're digging in a tomb in Egypt since they evidently didn't learn their lesson when they had to fight killer undead mummies in the first film. Turns out Weisz has been having crazy dreams about Egypt. They find some magic bracelet. Then we learn some stuff about a legendary bad guy called The Scorpion King that is all apocolypse, end of the world, don't mess with his burial place type stuff. Then some grave robbers fight with Brendan and his family. Then they go back to London. Then the naked chick from the beginning of the first film is reincarnated and goes to dig up Imhotep. Then he comes back to life. Then we have a lot of flashbacks to the first film, but they've added characters into scenes who weren't there the first time around and given the Pharaoh a vengeful daughter who just happens to be reincarnated as Rachel Weisz. Then the good guys go pick up John Hannah, who's running an Egyptian casino in London. It turns out he kept this special magical item we never saw in the first film. Some guys come looking for it. His place burns down. Imhotep brings his killer mummies to London. There's a lot of chase scenes. They go to Egypt. There's more chase scenes. There's an insane number of scenes where scarabs eat people. The Scorpion King comes back to life. There's more special effects. The movie ends.”
That’s pretty close to how it finally turned out. The much-bitched-about kid in the film is Alex, played by Freddie Boath, and I’m happy to report that he’s not your standard-issue movie kid at all. Far from it, actually. He’s a scrappy little guy who never gives in to cute, who carries his own weight over the course of the adventure, and who actually gets off a few memorable lines.
The other major detail that changed is the way John Hannah’s character Jonathan is introduced. He does not own his own casino. Instead, he’s the same sort of charming reprobate he played the first time around, and he’s using the home of Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evie (Rachel Weisz) as his own, trying to impress a leggy blonde. The reincarnated Anck-Su-Namunh (Patricia Velasquez) shows up looking for the bracelet of the Scorpion King, which Rick and Evie picked up in the film’s opening scenes, and mistakes Jonathan for Rick. His rescue sets off my favorite set-piece in the new film, a chase through London involving a double-decker bus and reanimated mummy warriors who are remarkably integrated into the scene. It’s the best CG in the film, and some of the best character CG I’ve seen so far. These guys have real weight and heft when they run down the street or when they attack Rick and Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr), and they’re menacing.
I heard many criticisms of the original film, complaints that it wasn’t scary enough or dark enough or serious enough, and those viewers are going to find the same things to be true about this film. It’s no darker than the original, no more serious, and I really don’t think of these as scary movies. But complaining that this isn’t a darker film is a lot like complaining that a musical has too much music in it. These are not serious horror films. They’re whole-hearted throwbacks to the days of the adventure serial, and they’re filtered through the uniquely campy prism of Stephen Sommers. He has carved a niche now that I think is his and his alone. Other directors who try this sort of approach to material (coughjoelschumachercough) inevitably screw it up, never getting the tone right. Sommers has such a love for what it is he’s doing, such a rabid enthusiasm, that I personally find it impossible to dislike.
This time around, his whole cast seems to be very aware of exactly what they’re trying to do, and they all hit the right notes along the way. I remain impressed by Brendan Fraser as a physical performer. There are very few credible action leads in his age group who are willing to play this sort of role without winking at the camera, without trying to be hipper than the material. Fraser throws himself into it fearlessly, and the result is highly entertaining, even if there’s less time spent on character than action this time out.
Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velasquez both handle their roles very well here, and they’re playing similar things, reincarnated women who provide strength for the men they love. Sommers writes his women with all the courage and charisma that he writes his men, and it’s delightful to see Weisz and Velasquez right there in the middle of the action, mixing it up, neither one of them willing to just stand off to the side and scream. I think Weisz gets lovelier as time goes by, and the gusto with which she attacks this particular role gives her a sexy sort of glow throughout, especially when she’s sharing a screen with Fraser. Their chemistry works better than the sparks between Velasquez and Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), whose resurrection she arranges. Vosloo, looking more than ever like a rounder Billy Zane, isn’t given enough screentime to be a truly menacing presence this time out, but he’s got his moments.
And then there’s The Rock. If you look at his prominence in the ad campaign, you might think the entire film was about him, or at least that he would play a prominent role in the goings-on. Nope. Two minutes at the beginning of the film with no English dialogue and he’s gone until the final appearance of the monstrous Scorpion King, an ILM creation that features a synthetic reproduction of The Rock’s head. If there’s anything that keeps this film from being as much fun as the first one, it’s the final monster, which seemed distractingly artificial to me. Still, he’s just one part of the big finish, and I really like the armies of Annubis, so I guess I can live with it.
The reason I was so glib in my initial description of the film’s plot was because I found it all a little silly, and it is. There’s no denying it. But the energy of the film more than makes up for it, and in some ways, I think anyone who complains that a movie about reanimated mummies and other beasties fighting archaeologists is probably in the wrong theater to start with. Adrian Biddle's photography, as in the first film, is top-notch, and the substitution of Alan Silvestri for Jerry Goldsmith didn't noticeably impact the proceedings. There's some great ILM work here, and there's some other stuff that's a little dodgy. In particular, the backgrounds on all the dirigible sequences never really works. There's also an unfortunate TITANIC echo in one scene that sent the preview audience I saw the film with into fits of laughter. These are mere speedbumps, though, little things that get lost in the overall manic glee of things. No, they don’t explain the goings-on in any significant detail. No, the story doesn’t really add up to anything. No, there’s not a lick of subtext. Yes, there are crazy pygmy cannibal skeletons that are never explained, and powers are introduced with the same haphazard refusal to explain as new major characters. This is, in the end, a big giant thrill ride that's about absolutely nothing...
... and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
"Moriarty" out.
