Moldy Camp

Death warmed over.
  Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz

The Mummy (1999) is a stab at camp, a remake of the shlocky Valley of the Kings (1954) with Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker, and the tasty adult adventure movie King Solomon’s Mines (1950) with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr. This version has nothing at all to do with the arch, creepy, Teutonic 1932 version directed for Universal by Karl Freund, an Expressionist chiller whose troubling imagery is like being entombed with moldy corpses in a graveyard. This version can’t meet any of its humble, imbecile obligations: even the character actors (the movie saviors and scene stealers of the past) are awful. 

The jocularity is so broad and cringe that twenty minutes of it puts you in a sour mood. At over two hours and five minutes of frenetic stupidity, you might come out of it convinced that movies have never provided charm or magic.

Another unintended bit of residue of The Mummy is that it makes you hate the affable Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Industrial Light and Magic, CGI, Egypt, and even bandages. How can it be ethical — or even legal — to treat the Bronze Age this way?