The Mummy
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, and Arnold Vosloo
This is the last movie I see before Episode I, and the first movie of my summer vacation. I hooked up with a group of friends in the big city to see this, and it’s a great way to kick off the summer.
The plot is fairly simple: a brother and sister team of Egyptologists want to travel to the middle of the desert to seek the City of the Dead. The sister wants to do it as an archeological find, but the brother comes along because the place is a huge treasure trove. To guide them, they enlist a Foreign Legion officer, (Fraser), and the only man ever to return alive from the place. When there, they unwittingly release the mummy Imhotep, who seeks to first re-generate his body, and then resuurect his beloved from the dead.
This film, depsite how it’s being billed, is not that much of a horror movie. It is more of an action/adventure, with plenty of doses of humor thrown in for good measure. Fraser makes a good leading-man and Indiana Jones wannabe, and Weisz is OK as the woman who starts the whole adventure. And the climax, with all the warrior mummies is truly cool! My only complaint: too many flesh-eating beetles. Oh, and the effects were fantastic! (This is the last film ILM worked on before starting work on Episode I.)