Man, 1999 was quite a year at the movies. Not only was it a time when people still went to the movies with a regularity that theater owners would kill for today, but the array of classics to emerge from that particular year remains quite impressive today: The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, Magnolia, The Blair Witch Project, and Election are among 1999’s best… It was even the year Star Wars came back! But perhaps the most beloved film of all from 1999 is writer-director Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy, a picture that remains a consistent fan favorite today.
What is it about the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz action-comedy romp that’s so appealing? And why hasn’t it lost any of that appeal despite being the type of movie that Hollywood kind of doesn’t make anymore? Well, perhaps the answer lies within the question itself – Hollywood really doesn’t make movies like The Mummy anymore, and a lot of us sure do miss them.
But let’s back up a bit. The Mummy is kind of a remake of the 1932 Universal Monsters classic of the same name in so far as the basic plot: In ancient Egypt, the priest Imhotep’s lover dies, and so he attempts to use magic to resurrect her. But he’s captured before he can, and punished for his crimes – mummified and buried alive. Thousands of years later, in the “modern” era of the early 20th century, he’s accidentally revived, a now-supernatural being intent on bringing his dead lover back to life… even if it means sacrificing a young woman to do so.
What’s so clever about Sommers’ movie is that he took that horror premise and turned it into a swashbuckling adventure-comedy. It’s also way more entertaining than its eight minutes of opening voiceover/exposition would lead one to expect. Typically, when you need to start your movie off with that much explanation and set-up, it can be a real drag, and yet Sommers injects Imhotep’s origin story with (late 1990s CGI) scope, thrills, and sexiness that’s all kind of silly and breakneck and fun (and yes, fun is a word that constantly applies to this movie).
So by the time Arnold Vosloo’s Imhotep has been buried alive, it’s a Schrödinger’s mummy situation – alive or dead or alive-dead, he’s stuck where he is; a supernatural loaded gun waiting over three millennia for Fraser’s adventurer Rick O’Connell and Weisz’s librarian Evelyn Carnahan to stumble onto him like the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark rolling through the set of a screwball comedy.
Fraser is of course terrific as O’Connell – he’s kinda cocky, but with “who, me?” vibes, and brings big energy to things, whether he’s yelling back at scary mummies or trying to talk his way out of the hangman’s noose. But Weisz may actually be the MVP here; that her introduction as Evelyn involves her precariously trying to balance on a tall ladder in a Buster Keaton-esque display both sets the tone of the hijinks that are to come while also identifying her as a smart-but-less-than-perfect cookie who is going to be as important in this story as O’Connell is – if not more. Whether she’s eagerly stepping over her brother, who’s just been punched in the face, to learn more about the mystical City of the Dead, or coaching said brother (a hilarious John Hannah) in deciphering ancient texts while fighting Imhotep’s revived mummy lover, Evelyn has got it going on.
Sure, some of the early CGI effects of The Mummy haven’t aged all that well, but so what? They’re still sort of cool, like when the slowly regenerating Imhotep is walking around with a half-open skull, or when his face subtly appears in a sandstorm. (I’m not even talking about the more famous face-in-the-sand shots, but rather a brief moment that precedes those.) And in fact, some of these effects still work like gangbusters – you try watching a scarab bury itself under a dude’s flesh and try not to be freaked out a bit. That said, Sommers also leans into a lot of old-school, practical approaches as well, which no doubt add to the film’s charm. Imhotep’s mummy followers are often guys in suits, for example, and the director also shoots some of the film’s more gruesome action in shadows or silhouette, maintaining that precious PG-13 rating.
Even the film’s weaker aspects wind up working in its favor in a way. We already talked about that opening exposition, but the band of competing American treasure-seekers, a group of stereotypes as unmemorable as they come, wind up being Red Shirts anyway, meeting untimely demises that stand out way more than the characters themselves. (Shout out to the guy who loses his eyes and tongue and is still played for laughs after that!) It’s almost as if Sommers dug up some ancient scroll that, once translated, gave him the key to making a movie that was going to work no matter what. And it does!
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