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Review: The Mummy
by Kerry Douglas Dye

published 5/10/99

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Kerry Douglas Dye is LeisureSuit.net's Manhattan-based Senior Editor.



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Subj: the mummy
i like the mummy cause teaches me how to learn how to do egyptian.

-- jennifer
Mar 29, 2005 at 8:37AM

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Last year, number eight on my Top 10 Movies of 1998 was a picture called Deep Rising, about crooks vs. a sea monster on a foundering pleasure cruiser. I took endless crap for liking this picture, but only from people who hadn't seen it. It's not perfect, but it's smart, it's funny, it's exciting, and it's the greatest unseen gem of that year.

Now Deep Rising's writer/director Stephen Sommers has another picture coming out, The Mummy, which will hopefully expose a wider audience to his unique blend of action, humor, and diligently recycled cliches before it gets flattened by the Star Wars juggernaut coming in a couple of weeks. It's got everything you could possibly want from a supernatural adventure tale: macho heroes, blushing ingenues, foreign-accented clowns, booby trapped archeological digs, corny dialogue . . . shit, even screen wipes between scenes.

This telling of The Mummy begins over 3000 years ago, when High Priest Imhotep is caught in flagrante in the throne room with the Pharaoh's concubine. For his crimes, he is given an oddball sentence: the details aren't important, although they're painful-looking enough to invoke squirms in the audience, but apparently this type of sentence has a nasty side effect--it tends to create an unstoppable undead monster with the power to take over the world.

Naturally, the Egyptians, after carrying out this sentence, are very careful to make sure that Imhotep's mummified body isn't discovered, lest that whole unstoppable monster taking over the world thing happens. When, three thousand years later, Brendan Fraser and a pair of brother and sister archeologists (John Hannah and Rachel Weisz, whose ultra-Jewish name gives me a reflexive hard-on) start poking around in Hamunaptra (The City of the Dead . . . duh) where Imhotep is buried, the descendants of the Pharaoh's bodyguards are still on hand to try to stop them from uncovering the monster. The bodyguards are a little too lenient, though, because they give Brendan Fraser and the gang enough leeway to read from the Book of the Dead (big mistake, if you've ever seen a Bruce Campbell movie) and resurrect Imhotep. The moral of the story, apparently, is that Egyptians are fuckups.

So then it's just a matter of running around Egypt trying to stop this gradually reconstituting Mummy while he murders the tomb raiders in gruesome ways and plans on sacrificing Brendan Fraser's budding sweetheart so he can bring his girlfriend back to life. There's plenty of flesh eating bugs, supernatural sandstorms, and leprous lobotomized Muslims to keep everything moving at a nice clip, and the performances by Fraser, Hannah, Kevin J. O'Connor (who in Deep Rising played a good-guy American clown, and here plays a bad-guy Egyptian clown) and others keep the hijinks light and agreeable.

The Mummy is gloriously corny and marvelously entertaining. Like Deep Rising, it's a rip-off of a dozen or more pictures that came before it, but as old-fashioned genre entertainment, it delivers the goods in a very satisfying way.


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THE YAK SHACK


Name: jennifer
Subject: the mummy
-- Mar 29, 2005 at 8:37AM
i like the mummy cause teaches me how to learn how to do egyptian.

Name: The Editors Respond
Subject: Re: cmplant
-- Feb 5, 2005 at 1:33PM
Yeah, you don't know how to use Google and thus WE suck.

Moron.

Name: eve ruisi
Subject: cmplant
-- Feb 5, 2005 at 1:24PM
i came here to get info for a project and you are talking about movies!!!!! im NEVER coming here again!!!!!!
:}ta-ta

Name: papabooks
Subject: Oded Fehr
-- Jan 30, 2005 at 10:49AM
Oded Fehr is so hott!!!!!

Name: Carla Franzan
Subject: Oded Fehr
-- Jan 5, 2005 at 11:56AM
You are so wonderful!
I love you, write to me:

orli.bloom@ig.co m.br

Name: Franny
Subject: all-o-ya
-- Jul 20, 2004 at 3:40AM
i luv ya all. u all were fantastic and i wish i could meet ya coz i have done somfin fa ya, it's not what ya think. we don't get much actors here in Australia

Name: evelyn
Subject: oded ferh
-- Sep 5, 2003 at 4:11PM
I love you!!!!!
I LOVE YOU!!!!!!

I am dreaming about you
love
Evelyn

Name: You Don't have to know my name!!
Subject: Oded !!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhhhhh!!!
-- Sep 2, 2002 at 7:55PM
He is sooooooo fine!!!!
I'm melting.........

Name: Ivia
Subject: Oded Ferh
-- Apr 10, 2002 at 10:45AM
Hello! I like your movie very much. Write me to my address: 100 Villas de Monterrey apdo. 207 Bayamon, PR 00957

Name: Paichow
Subject: oded ferh
-- Feb 10, 2002 at 9:05AM
i want another movie of oded ferh... i mean not just the mummy movie...but another movie featuring oded ferh.... like him act..

Name: Marsha
Subject: Mummy
-- Jan 12, 2002 at 5:34PM
To Dud and Egwene,
Do we detect a hint of
jealousy on your part.
Just becaue you didn't
see him drink anything
else does that make it
so. I never heard or saw
anyone go to the restroom either, guess they all held it well. If you don't care for the movie don't comment on it, keep it to yourself. Those of us who did like the movie do not want to hear your
criticizm. If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all.

Name: Shannahan
Subject: UdedFerh
-- Jan 6, 2002 at 7:45PM
Loved the mpvie. And would really like to have more info such as Birth date etc.

Name: Tiana
Subject: Brendan+Rachel
-- Dec 31, 2001 at 2:25AM
--Dec30,2001
I think they both are talented people.They also make a cute couple in the movie.I wish I could meet them because, I only saw one actor in my life. Because here in Maui,Hawaii you hardly see any actors.Please send me an E-mail.ALOHA

Name: Asura
Subject: Oded Ferh and The Rock
-- Dec 24, 2001 at 12:36AM
wow... i love them two. hope to see them in another film of The Mummy no. 3 maybe......

Name: Leiax
Subject: Oded Ferh
-- Nov 21, 2001 at 1:13PM
Oh my god,I don't care if he is from Spain or from Israel he is so fine that I think he is God sent(from heaven).

Name: kiana
Subject: love
-- Nov 20, 2001 at 9:22AM
your movie has no love in it!!!!!

Name: Kay
Subject: Oded Ferh
-- Sep 10, 2001 at 12:13AM
he is so gorgeous he makes me melt. i understand that he is married, what do you know of his home life? wife,kids, likes dislikes, where is home,all the good stuff. just cause he is married does not make him uninteresting. a true fan would love his family too..... so any info would be great, even straight from him...

Name: Ami Rachel O'Connell
Subject: Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell
-- Aug 12, 2001 at 11:53PM
I think that Evie is the most hottest woman in the movie of the mummy and the mummy returns. I like har so much because she is beautiful, talented, good mother, patient, princess, protector,and most of all loyal to her husband.

Name: Turd Ferguson
Subject: ODED FEHR
-- Aug 2, 2001 at 8:04PM
oh, what a gorgeouse man Oded is! I love his teeth, jaw line, body, hair, eyes, the whole package is VERY nice!!!

Name: KAY
Subject: ODED FERH
-- Jul 8, 2001 at 1:59PM
YO 'SUP ALL YOU ODED FANS BIG NEWS FLASH 4 YA! ODED IS HAPPILY MARRIED SO Y'ALL BACK OFF HIS HOT REAR. "HEY FISHY FISHY FISHY" I REALY WANT TO KILL THE PRODUCERS FOR MAKING HIM DO THAT IN DEUCE BIGALOW MALE GIGOLO, DON'T YOU.

Name: Patti
Subject: ODED FERH
-- Jul 8, 2001 at 1:49PM
I may only be 13 but I have to admit Oded Ferh is the HOTTEST man I have ever seen especialy in Deuce Bigalow male gigolo.

Name: Andrea
Subject: Oded Ferh
-- Jul 4, 2001 at 8:15PM
to the other Andrea don't be soooooo stupid Oded Ferh is not spanish he is from Isreal.
But he is one hell of a man he is so fine.

Name: Andrea
Subject: Oded Ferh
-- Jun 10, 2001 at 11:10AM
I'm from Barcelona, Spain
Oh my god... what a incredible man. It seems a spanish man!! aaarrrgh!! I love him!!

Name: dud
Subject: my god!
-- Jan 21, 2000 at 7:43PM
What a fucking turkey! This film had the potential to be hilariously tongue-in-cheek, and everyone played it straight! That only made us pay attent to the plot, with it concomitant gaping holes--did you notice that the whole while they were in the fucking desert, the only one we saw sweat was the smarmy Egyptian bad guy?! And that throughout the film, not only did they never eat, but the only thing we ever saw them drink was, get this, liquor--in the freakin' desert, for christsakes!

And what do they do, once they find out that Mummies have a severe allergic reaction to cats? Do they wisely duct tape the feline to a stick and carry it with them where'er they go?! Of course not! We never see the fuckin' mouse chaser again! I mean, I would've had cat nunchucks if it were me!

Could've been hilarious, instead it gets classed with Showgirls as deserving raucous laughter only at its own ineptitude. God damn, what a stinker!

Name: Egwene
Subject: The Mummy
-- Oct 9, 1999 at 10:16PM
[No yak posted by this mo-mo. Apparently the concept of a Web form is too complicated for him.]


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