Die Mumie

I'm a fan of this "type" of movie, i.e. Indiana Jones, clean cut fun. I liked the '99 Mummy version (Brendan Fraser & Rachel Wiesz) a lot, but this movie is not in the same vein. It is not meant to be campy, but it still light hearted.

I like the stories arch, and how it was told. Though Sofia Boutella, Ahmanet, was actually quite good in her role.

Maybe people we expecting a remake of the '99 version, or maybe people didn't expect this from Cruise. Whatever the reason, count me as someone who wasn't disappointed.

There's a group of people who are absolutely obsessed with the Brendan Fraser movie. They saw it when they were kids and they talk about it constantly on places like reddit. So when they're favorite meme of a movie got remade, they were outraged. You can even see them calling the Fraser film "the original" in some of the other reviews here. Obviously, that wasn't the original.

There is also a group of people who love mummy, Dracula and Frankenstein films from Universal and Hammer. I was excited to see all these great characters come to life again. The first group has never seen the Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee Hammer films or the Universal movies.

This is not a bad movie at all. And to realize that a chance to see these great, classic horror characters and stories be retold again was ruined because of the first group is disappointing.

It's never good when you have to say "It's not that bad!" but I think the Mummy is being treated to harshly by critics. It has a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Really? It's not a great movie, but it is fun to watch and I thought the ending was very good. It felt a bit like a B- Movie in the beginning, but I still enjoyed it.

7 out of 10

This movie is a classic case of design-by-committee ruining a production. What makes it special is... you get the feeling that everyone understood this. They didn't even try to make a serious product. This movie makes choices that are so bafflingly silly there's no way the people signing off on them didn't know. They didn't care, and this lack of seriousness opens up the space for some decently fun moments. This is a bad movie of the enjoyable kind.

One of the biggest blockbusters to come out in the summer of 1999 was an Egypt-set action thriller starring Brendan Fraser. While the film was pretty campy and over-the-top, it worked well and resonated with audiences. Fast-forward 18 years and we have a film of the same title - 'The Mummy' - only starring Tom Cruise in the role of Nick Morton, a treasure hunting renegade who stumbles upon a 5,000-year curse.

The only problem is, this film is far inferior to the original. Whether it's Cruise's schtick not jiving with the plot, or the lackluster CGI, or the wooden script, it's hard to say. There's really nothing thrilling about 'Mummy,' as everything feels borrowed, used or broken - nothing is shiny and new. Even fresh faces like Jake Johnson and Sofia Boutella aren't enough to up the excitement factor, and vets like Russell Crowe come off as looking to be in need of a paycheck rather than delivering a performance to be happy with. The action sequences are boring, the "comic relief" is far from funny and the acting itself is nothing to marvel at.

Cruise can usually find a way to make his films at least somewhat entertaining, but he fails here. There is no chemistry between any of the characters, including Nick and his love interest, Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), so the onus is really on Cruise to shoulder everything. In this case, it's an insurmountable task.

'The Mummy' is a half-hearted attempt to revive a franchise that started strong and has since faded, so it's likely it will be put back in a sarcophagus.