The Mummy

reviewed by Vivian Rose, age 14, from US

Next to "Star Wars", "The Mummy" has got to be the most hyped up film for the summer of '99. Very few- if any- movies live up to such incredible hype.
It's not that I didn't like "The Mummy". It was reasonably entertaining, although certainly not as remarkable as the previews touted it to be.

I really enjoyed the first ten minutes, which take place in ancient Egypt. A bald guy named Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) is in love with the Pharoah's mistress so together they kill the Pharoah and while trying to escape she is caught and killed. Imhotep and his priests steal her body from its tomb in order to perform the mummification process, therefore bringing her back as an immortal. Rioters stop him before the process is complete, and he is buried alive in her tomb.

Then the movie progresses several hundred years into the future, to the early nineteen- hundreds. That's when the plot becomes considerably less interesting.
Brendan Frazier, who can't look convincing for anything, plays Rick O'Connell an adventurer who takes a bookish librarian and her brother on a treasure hunt. In search of the lost city of Hamanaptra, they travel across Egypt, and eventually they find it. Not knowing any better, the librarian reads aloud an incantation from an ancient book, thereby invoking an ancient curse (i.e., she wakes up Imhotep's mummy and he begins stalking the streets).

"The Mummy" was a bit too silly and unrealistic. Some attempts at humor were funny, but these quickly grew old. It's obvious that while some research was done prior to the making of this film, the plot is still loosely constructed and at least partly fictitious. Had this film been done as more of a serious drama, with more emphasis on actual historic events, and with more of the plot set in ancient Egypt, it would have been more compelling and stirring. A better cast wouldn't have hurt either. One more piece of advice for "The Mummy"'s producers: if you're going to make a horror movie, please try to make it at least marginally spooky.

Rating : PG-13 (For pervasive adventure violence and some partial nudity)

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