How presumptuous is Universal, who haven’t earned an ounce of goodwill with an audience yet, to still have the stones to flash a title sequence announcing Dark Universe, a giant film franchise that begins with “The Mummy.” You can’t fault ambition but, unfortunately for the studio, their confidence that you’ll love the film and want future monster movie installments is only matched by a total unawareness that the picture is a dreadful, tonally incoherent, and often unintentionally funny mess. It’s a deadly combination that’s both cynical in its mercenary view of franchise assumptions and clueless about its worth.
“The Mummy” opens with a painfully long, expository prologue with a lot of mumbo jumbo about mythical scarabs, gods, hieroglyphics and ancient texts about an evil Egyptian princess (Sofia Boutella) maliciously wiped from the history books. The story itself kicks off in London and the Middle East where discoveries are made of ancient tombs and sarcophagi. Tom Cruise and Jake Johnson play Nick Morton and Chris Vail: military men, partners in crime, and so-called “liberators of precious antiquities,” with the pair using their time in Iraq to steal whatever’s not nailed down. Some action comedy bumbling here and some mysterious supernatural happenings there and eventually the Mummy is awakened and all hell begins to break loose.
Stephen Sommers‘ 1999 take on “The Mummy” had no pretense of what it was: silly, broad and delivered video game-like excitement. This current version of “The Mummy” is tedious, dense and ill-conceived. Additionally, ‘The Mummy” is totally disingenuous about its main character. Nick is framed as a complex person with shades of moral gray — he’s a compulsively scheming thief, and a scoundrel with a heart of gold (not unlike a more opportunistic Han Solo and Indiana Jones) — but none of this convinces, and Cruise robotically always inches towards the heroic quality of the character that lay underneath the lame dress shirt he’s forced to wear for most of the picture. It’s as if Cruise isn’t capable of playing a character that isn’t a superman.
READ MORE: Tom Cruise Talks ‘Top Gun 2,’ Reveals Sequel Title
In fact, the actor’s participation itself is curious. His agenda generally tends to be filmmaker driven. Recently he’s worked with Doug Liman, Christopher McQuarrie, Brad Bird, and Joseph Kosinski, and in the past he’s collaborated with auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Michael Mann, Paul Thomas Anderson and more. But the actor seems hoodwinked here, putting his faith into a project without personality and one that never once finds its footing (hilariously, the press notes explain that Cruise screened “The Shining” and “Se7en” for the crew — films that are in another dimension next to “The Mummy”).
Joylessly directed by Alex Kurtzman — writer/producer of entries in the “Transformers,” “Star Trek” and “Mission: Impossible” series, and one of the architects of the Dark Universe — it’s not that the filmmaker is out of his depth inside a four quadrant tentpole, but he is woefully unprepared to make an entertaining movie and one that makes a whole lot of sense. Penned by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dylan Kussman, with a story by Kurtzman, Jon Spaihts, and Jenny Lumet, if “The Mummy” sounds like it was written by committee you might be right. But more accurately, “The Mummy” feels like triage job where each screenwriter was trying to clean up that last author’s mess.
READ MORE: Dwayne Johnson & Angelina Jolie Eyed For Roles In Universal’s Dark Universe Franchise
The unintended highlight (of sorts) of the movie is Russell Crowe as Dr. Henry Jekyll (who gets a chortle-worthy entrance), the Nick Fury character of the Dark Universe with his own uncontrollable Hulk side too (his Mr. Hyde features a laughable cockney accent). It’s quite an achievement to be this bad on screen in two different roles and it’s obvious Jekyll will try and unite the monsters of this universe to fight greater evils. Crowe runs away with the movie thanks to the hysterically awful dialogue he’s given and the hammy way he chooses to deliver it without the slightest trace of irony. Heavy on the voiceover, to explain seemingly everything, Crowe suffers deep ignominy with this role.
A creature feature that has already been brought to the big screen a few times, this new version of “The Mummy” may attempt to be “grounded and modern,” but it veers off into five different directions. Equal parts “The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman,” “Van Helsing,” “Underworld,” and a wannabe “Indiana Jones,” this film wants to be all things to all people. This means running off a checklist and mashing in as many elements as possible much to the detriment of a coherent movie. “The Mummy” has elements of a quippy buddy comedy, a supernatural horror featuring action-adventure derring-do, a begrudging romance (Cruise and Annabelle Wallis in a Han/Princess Leia dynamic) and more. Aspiring to please everyone, the goofy movie fails at nearly everything. In defense of “The Mummy,” it has one thrilling moment: an exciting set-piece set on a military plane that’s going down. It signals ever so briefly to the audience that the movie is going to be an exhilarating, action-packed adventure ride. But it’s over before it begins and the movie quickly returns to its regularly scheduled program of lifelessness.
So what does the future bring? As Dr. Jekyll explains, sometimes it’s only the monsters can keep the greater forces of darkness at bay. Good luck. “The Mummy” is a dated, empirically dismal, laughable excuse to kick off a franchise, and it should have remained entombed. [D-]