Shaun de Waal Pop movie of the week
Stephen Somers’s film, The Mummy, updates the 1932 original via Indiana Jones, making of it an adventure romp rather than a mere horror flick, though the monster still takes centre stage in this hugely enjoyable creature feature.
He is not the somewhat sad figure provided by Boris Karloff in the first movie (and now, of course, the safety of the whole world is at stake), so we don’t develop much sympathy for the resurrected priest, Imhotep, seeking to revive his long-lost love. The lack of emotional inflection, however, is compensated for by the expert and seamless computer animation supplied by George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic, as impressive as anything in The Phantom Menace, whether it be the semi-decomposed body (“It’s still juicy!”) or the terrifying swarm of flesh-eating beetles. When the mummy achieves human form, a form supplied by Arnold Vosloo, he projects just the right amount of saturnine malice.
The adventurers who unwittingly awake the creature – and must then send him back to the underworld – are neatly delineated stereotypes. Rachel Weisz is the klutzy librarian Evelyn, who wants to get her hands on an ancient golden book (and, eventually, on someone’s body); John Hannah is her unreliable rogue of a brother, Jonathan; and Brendan Fraser is Rick O’Connell, the American desperado who leads them to the hidden city of Hamunaptra, where the mummy lies incarcerated. They are in competition with another bunch of treasure-hunters, guided by Rick’s former sidekick, the amusingly jittery Beni (Kevin J O’Connor).
These roles are all played with consummate lightness of touch. The fetching Fraser, in particular, who has said he was mostly required to walk around “looking like a stud”, brings a nice layer of irony to his portrayal of gun-slinging Rick O’Connell. With a skill that would be beyond the likes of Keanu Reeves, say, he stays just this side of absurdity without losing the sense of fun – and he veritably oozes charm. The genre of comedy-thriller, the fast-paced adventure lightened by witticisms under pressure la Indiana Jones and the later James Bond movies, has seldom been done better.
Naturally, the film is fairly ridiculous, ahistorical and anachronistic, but then it doesn’t take itself seriously for a split second, so it doesn’t matter. One can just sit back and enjoy the ride.