Movie Review - The Mummy

The Mummy * (out of 5) (PG-13) SPOILER ALERT - This review contains plenty, but the film makers deserve them!

Reasons not to watch this turkey:

1- Sofia Boutella, who was mesmerizing as the springblade-legged assassin in Kingsman: The Secret Service, is completely wasted in this drab role, despite playing the title character.

2- Tom Cruise, as the reanimated Mummy’s new love interest and/or destiny fulfiller, gets far more screen time than Boutella, making it a supernatural Mission Improbable flick.

3- The plot, such as it is, involves a foxy, ambitious princess, poised to become the next pharaoh until daddy sires a son, who jumps ahead in the line of succession the moment the doc spanks his princely bottom. That leads her to strike a deal with Set, the God of the Dead. She fillets the rest of her family before anyone can breed again, and will kill a lover, whose body Set would then inhabit for a long and happy reign of torturing everyone else...together. That failed; she was mummified alive and buried in Iraq for a few millennia, until a couple of US soldiers of dubious character (Cruise and Jake Johnson) accidentally un-bury her with an airstrike during our national misadventures over there. By amazing coincidence, a comely British archaeologist (Annabelle Wallis) Cruise had just boinked to snatch an ancient map from her, arrives on the scene to schlep the crypt to England, where other artifacts essential to the babe's old plot were also unearthed.

4- Her boss (Russell Crowe) is Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Literally. That one. No explanation for how he’s still alive in the present, or not fictional, or not living under a pseudonym.

5- After reading such a dreadful script, Cruise must have signed on because he thought this spin on an ancient religion made Scientology seem relatively palatable.

6- The drivel factor includes repetitive exposition (even repeating scenes of the backstory), making its 110 minutes seem even longer.

7- The CG action sequences are mostly shot with so little lighting that it’s hard to get the adrenalin boost most viewers seek when choosing such fare.

8- The only character who deserves our empathy dies early in the going...lucky stiff.

9- The movie’s lame ending actually sets up a sequel!!!! Hubris, thy name is Hollywood.

10 - If they do try to make one, suitable working titles could be Bill and Ted’s Excrement Adventure, Dawn of the Dud, or Raiders of the Lost Art.

Note: This may be my harshest review since Bill Cosby’s Ghost Dad, and that was in 1990 when I was still one of his fans. (6/9/17)