But mimicking the tropes doesn\u2019t mean an Indy<\/em> riff can work well. Twenty-five years ago, with his remake of The Mummy<\/em>, writer\/director Stephen Sommers managed to pull off a near-magic trick of a Spielbergian homage, less because of his careful writing and more because he hit the casting jackpot twice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as you can\u2019t clone Harrison Ford (no matter how hard Hollywood may try), it\u2019s difficult to find a pair as charming as Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. As much as Indiana Jones<\/em> is a standard-bearer of modern action, Ford was only well matched on screen by his female counterpart in Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em> with Karen Allen. In The Mummy<\/em>, Fraser, as American adventurer Rick O\u2019Connell, has a delightful chemistry with Weisz, as the shy and intelligent librarian Evelyn Carnahan. O\u2019Connell is, unlike Indy, not even slightly professorial. He\u2019s a hard-bitten ex-French Foreign Legion fighter with first-hand knowledge of the eponymous mummy, a high priest on the hunt for his true love, the future bride of the Pharaoh. Evelyn is a bookish type whose caddish brother enlists her and eventually O\u2019Connell to take part in an adventure to go to the mummy\u2019s resting place in the Egyptian City of the Dead in the hopes of becoming wildly rich. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Murderous and terrifying hijinks (naturally) ensue, but the key to the film has always been the combination of Fraser and Weisz. At the time, Fraser was more well-known than Weisz, having proved his comic-himbo chops in everything from Encino Man<\/em> to George of the Jungle<\/em>. Though Fraser easily pulls off the matinee-idol looks in The Mummy<\/em>, his comic timing is a secret weapon. One of the film\u2019s best running gags involves O\u2019Connell\u2019s love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with a slimy cohort of his (Kevin O\u2019Connor), with our hero getting mileage out of childishly attacking <\/a>Beni. And Fraser\u2019s chemistry with Weisz is immediate and extremely convincing. (It\u2019s far more than the eventual revelation here that when Evelyn takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, she\u2019s \u2013 gasp! \u2013 outrageously beautiful.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are so many reasons why The Mummy<\/em> shouldn\u2019t work \u2013 aside from being a very obvious Indy<\/em> riff, it\u2019s a remake of a classic horror film that partially seems to exist simply so Universal could shake off the dust from a piece of intellectual property. (Like what they did with the execrable Tom Cruise vehicle from 2017.) While reviews were mixed-to-positive, the box office was resoundingly successful; the film raked in over $150 million domestically. Of course, while its success led to a 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns<\/em>, Sommers couldn\u2019t catch lightning twice. Many of the players from the original showed up again, including Fraser, Weisz, and Arnold Vosloo, and yet the bombastic action is a shaky cover-up for a lack of winning charm and humor. It\u2019s not that The Mummy<\/em> \u201899 only worked outside <\/em>of its action sequences, but the sequel is an aggressive and slightly early example of how overreliance on special effects can ruin a film. (It\u2019s easy to laugh <\/a>at the horrendous CGI on Dwayne Johnson in his Scorpion King getup now, but even in 2001, the design was atrocious.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the intervening quarter-century, both Fraser and Weisz have won Oscars, and at least one of those was deserved. (That Fraser is having a recent boost in his career is wonderful, and he did exactly what he was asked to do in The Whale<\/em>, but\u2026 uh\u2026 hey, at least he was in Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>.) Although critics weren\u2019t uniformly in love with The Mummy<\/em>, it\u2019s a film that Millennials and Gen Z have glommed onto in strange ways, like this bumper sticker <\/a>that both stars eventually commented <\/a>upon. (This writer can confirm \u2013 it\u2019s a nice bumper sticker.) Sometimes, you get dealt a lucky hand as a filmmaker, and Stephen Sommers got dealt the luckiest possible hand in 1999. Though The Mummy<\/em> is not as good as the original trio of Indiana Jones<\/em> films, it does boast two impossibly charming and gorgeous leads at different stages of movie stardom. In some ways, The Mummy<\/em>, an unabashedly B-movie-style blend of action, comedy, romance, and horror, is a quintessential summer movie, offering exactly the right kind of goofy fun for the warmest time of year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Mummy” is streaming on Peacock<\/a> and available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/mummy2-1024x577.jpg\")
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