Really, Really Bad Movies I Love, And Own: The Mummy
A year or so ago, I was laid up sick on the couch, watching Van Helsing, because nothing else was on and, let's face it, everyone I know expected me to. Not much was getting through the fever and medicine head beyond some really funny accents and unjustified plot developments - did they go through a mirror to the Ukraine for a Halloween party or something? - yet I was simultaneously disinterested in and vaguely angry at the whole thing. It seemed like a whole lot of money and some impossibly pretty faces wasted on nothing.
At some point, however, a very clear thought shot through the fog like a lightning bolt:
This is probably exactly how everybody else in the world felt while they were watching The Mummy.
Not me, though. I enjoyed director Stephen Sommers' first high-profile outing (Deep Rising shouldn't really count, should it? Shudder) both times I paid to see it in the theater. And the DVD regularly finds its way into my player when I'm in need of something to occasionally glance at while I'm doing something else, or I just plain can't sleep.
Why? Click through for the justification.
Movie: The Mummy, 1999
Plot: It isn't so much a remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff classic as a very loose paraphrasing. A librarian (hiding her Eventual Hotness behind specs, naturally) and her skeevy brother enlist the help of a roguish Foreign Legion adventurer to find the ancient Egyptian City of The Dead. They do. She inadvertently resurrects Imhotep, who sucks the life force out of everybody who was involved, and generally makes copious use of the best CGI effects available at the time. The Biblical plagues figure in for a bit, as well. At the end, the world is saved, and Brendan Fraser quits quipping long enough to get laid.
Five Reasons Why It's Watchable:
1. It's one of the few adventure movies with a big enough budget to say 'yeah, we're the new Indiana Jones.' It ain't, of course, but it's goofy and over-the-top enough that it gets an E for effort. Some of the one-liners are, seriously, priceless.
2. It doesn't take itself seriously, but it doesn't drench itself in irony, either. The Mummy winks at you; it doesn't try to ride that line where when things fall flat, it cops out and says 'we were just kidding the whole time.'
3. Kevin J. O'Connor (There Will Be Blood, Gods and Monsters, Amistad, Lord of Illusions, the aforementioned Van Helsing and Deep Rising). The guy's a talented actor who wasn't averse to stooping to ace b-movie comic foil. He could be the next Steve Zahn or Sam Rockwell.
4. That scene in which Evie demonstrates how the ancient Egyptians used concave mirrors to direct light. Clever! Neat! Quite possibly historically inaccurate!
5. Rachel Weisz AND Patricia Velasquez. Remember in Dazed & Confused, when the girls are in the bathroom talking about Gilligan's Island, and how the guys had it made because they had the cute, nerdy chick and the exotic siren? Um, jackpot.
Plot: It isn't so much a remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff classic as a very loose paraphrasing. A librarian (hiding her Eventual Hotness behind specs, naturally) and her skeevy brother enlist the help of a roguish Foreign Legion adventurer to find the ancient Egyptian City of The Dead. They do. She inadvertently resurrects Imhotep, who sucks the life force out of everybody who was involved, and generally makes copious use of the best CGI effects available at the time. The Biblical plagues figure in for a bit, as well. At the end, the world is saved, and Brendan Fraser quits quipping long enough to get laid.
Five Reasons Why It's Watchable:
1. It's one of the few adventure movies with a big enough budget to say 'yeah, we're the new Indiana Jones.' It ain't, of course, but it's goofy and over-the-top enough that it gets an E for effort. Some of the one-liners are, seriously, priceless.
2. It doesn't take itself seriously, but it doesn't drench itself in irony, either. The Mummy winks at you; it doesn't try to ride that line where when things fall flat, it cops out and says 'we were just kidding the whole time.'
3. Kevin J. O'Connor (There Will Be Blood, Gods and Monsters, Amistad, Lord of Illusions, the aforementioned Van Helsing and Deep Rising). The guy's a talented actor who wasn't averse to stooping to ace b-movie comic foil. He could be the next Steve Zahn or Sam Rockwell.
4. That scene in which Evie demonstrates how the ancient Egyptians used concave mirrors to direct light. Clever! Neat! Quite possibly historically inaccurate!
5. Rachel Weisz AND Patricia Velasquez. Remember in Dazed & Confused, when the girls are in the bathroom talking about Gilligan's Island, and how the guys had it made because they had the cute, nerdy chick and the exotic siren? Um, jackpot.
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You and my wife should watch movies together. Clearly you're on the same page.