Now Watching: The Mummy

The good: Sofia Boutella. The bad: everything else. The Mummy is one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year. Tom Cruise is horribly (and embarrassingly) miscast as a cheeky thief who unearths the prison of an ancient Egyptian princess – Ahmanet (Boutella). She’s the titular Mummy and by far the best and only redeeming aspect of this total shit show.

Tonally, the film is a complete mess, attempting to balance action, horror and comedy and failing miserably at all three. The story is very simple, but needlessly and repeatedly recapped.

The Mummy wants to stab Tom Cruise with a dagger to make him an immortal God with the power over life and death. This is a bad thing, apparently. Immortal? God? Super powers? Beautiful Egyptian princess? Wait, what’s the catch?

But Cruise must ‘resist’ and seek help from Russell Crowe, and that’s when the film really goes off the rails. Because The Mummy isn’t just its own thing. It’s also meant to serve as the launch pad for a new ‘cinematic universe’ of classic movie monsters. Ha! Good luck with that!

Crowe plays Mr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – although Hyde has a hilarious cockney accent which I suspect Crowe did for a laugh just to see if he could get away with it. Crowe and his team of evil hunters (?) or whatever the f**k they are capture and torture the Mummy and plan to dissect her. If the movie was trying to make me sympathise with the monster rather than the ‘heroes’ it was doing a good job.

The Mummy is a mess. It’s poorly shot, poorly edited and Cruise is horribly miscast. The action isn’t exciting. The attempts at comedy fall flat. There’s no ‘horror’ to speak of, not when the most interesting and sympathetic character is the ‘monster’ herself.

The 1999 Mummy movie with Brendan Fraser is everything this movie is not. It’s the perfect mix of action, horror and comedy. It’s pure fun, wrapped up with engaging and enjoyable characters. Go watch that instead.

3/10