The Mummy

Why is it that the very second men turn 40 years old, they either have a midlife crisis and start banging the nanny (see Ben Affleck) or they simply give up and turn into a fat blob (see Russell Crowe)? You would think that by being a star and having their pick of the litter, they could find someone worthwhile who could keep their attention until death does them part. Or since they don’t have real jobs, they could have their private chefs cook them some healthy meals and find 20 minutes out of the day to trip over a treadmill every now and then. But no, as it turns out, we are all the same. We are only as loyal as the options that are before us. If we have hundreds of perky 20 year old girls throwing themselves at us, we can’t help but slip into some HPV free strange even if it means destroying a perfectly good marriage. If we have a bottle of Jameson and a Fatburger sitting next to La Croix and a tuna wrap, we’re probably grabbing the Jamey and burger and running off to a dark corner somewhere so we don’t have to share it with anyone! That’s just who we are! It’s only a matter of time before Justin Timberlake cheats on Jessica Biel again when he and the rest of N’Sync go out on their Back to Basics tour. But don’t worry Jessica baby, you still have a fan here.

Well the alien Tom Cruise appears to be the one exception to this rule. This dude is 54 years old and still looks like he could be a professional soccer player in Europe somewhere (he’s way too short to play any American sports). I mean, sure it’s a bit of a stretch to see him as a young decorated soldier in the U.S. army but it’s not like you’re watching a 60 year old Roger Moore trying to play James Bond. That happened in real life by the way. Cruise has the acting chops, even though he never gets credit for it, to pull off almost any role. However the one role he does struggle with is one that requires comedic prowess. Yes, he got lucky in Tropic Thunder but overall he’s just a little too weird to make you believe that he’s actually funny. And this is where The Mummy fails.

We all remember how fun the Brenden Frazier films were in the 90’s but Frazier was the one weirdo, along with Pee Wee Herman, who was somehow able to pull off comedy. So why in the world they would try and recreate that magic with Cruise is beyond me! It seems as though the filmmakers tried to pull this off by teaming Cruise up with the normally entertaining Jake Johnson. But boy did that ever fall flat! Johnson was simply reduced to yelling at the top his lungs every time Cruise said something and in the process just wound up annoying you and instantly taking you out of the film. Keep in mind now that all of this takes place within the first 5 minutes of the movie and that’s typically a recipe for disaster.

Well thankfully they figure out early on that this pairing is not working at all and they slowly start to shift towards turning this into an action horror film. And for the most part it worked. You’re introduced to the ambitious to a fault Princess Ahmanet; played by the beautiful and talented Sofia Boutella. She was to be the heir to her father’s throne until one day he meets a skanky groupie, knocks her up, and has a son with her. Ahmanet is obviously distraught over this and decides to turn to the dark arts to get her revenge. Well in the process, she kills her father and her newborn stepbrother. And just as she’s about to bring this evil god back into the world to be her partner in crime and in life, these muscular Egyptian men come out of nowhere and stop her just in the nick of time. They wind up mummifying her while she’s still alive to punish her and it isn’t until the year 2017 that we discover her tomb.

Well once she’s unwittingly awaken by the opportunistic, greedy, and apparently selfish Cruise, she curses and chooses him to be the carrier of the god she tried to resurrect in her past life. And it’s at this point the film takes on a yet another weird persona; one that I particularly liked. There’s some odd but cool connection that develops between the two of them and Cruise must decide between his fate with Ahmanet or the burgeoning relationship that’s forming between him and the archaeologist Jenny Halsey.

Now if they had simply stuck to this storyline, the film could’ve been solid. But some reason they kept bringing back Jake Johnson to seemingly add some comic relief. And they also tried to incorporate a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde subplot, which again, could’ve been cool if executed properly. But no, they instead decided to cast the 400 lbs. and clearly uninterested in acting anymore Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll; and they also apparently ran out of money when it came to effects, so whenever he turned into Mr. Hyde, they just painted him green and he started grunting really loudly.

But even after that epic failure, it was still a fairly entertaining film until the ending that made absolutely no sense. I mean sure she was evil but why on Earth would you choose Jenny over Ahmanet? Damn that girl is sexy! It’s like Vin Diesel choosing Michelle Rodriguez over Charlize Theron or the hot Brazilian woman who became his baby momma. Even after giving her dumb looking cornrows, it doesn’t make any sense. And don’t worry, I didn’t give away what really happened at the end because trust me when I say it gets wilder than that!

In the end this films was simply way too flawed for me to recommend it to anyone, but I think it’s definitely worth a watch on Netflix in a few weeks. I give it a rating of pretty WEAK!