The Mummy (2017)

I've seen The Mummy twice now. Both times courtesy of my unlimited Curzon membership, so don't think I thought it was good enough to warrant paying for it twice.

Somewhere in The Mummy is a decent-enough film, but it looks like a film with a classic case of executive interference. Given that this is supposed to be the first film in a shared universe, it's understandable why the studio might be a bit nervous - but that nervousness could potentially lead to their universe being prematurely mummified and then buried somewhere in what used to be Ancient Mesopotamia.

The opening scene is a prime example. Russell Crowe provides what should be an unnecessary narration over events in Ancient Egypt. Most of what he tells the audience is revealed later in the film anyway - and the rest of it could have played out with a couple more minutes worth of ancient Egypt and maybe a bit of subtitled dialogue to give a little more context of what was going on in the scene. Given the experience of the writers attached to the film, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't how it was originally intended to play.

There are also numerous cases of over-explanation - lines of dialogue that go against the natural rhythm of the speech and which often seem at odds with the quality of the rest of the dialogue in the scenes. What should be snappy banter becomes weighed down with unnecessary lines.

Then there's Jekyll. And here come some (minor) spoilers - so you might want to give this paragraph a wide berth. It shouldn't come to much of a surprise to most people that he has a monstrous alter ego. That's made fairly evident from Cruise's character's first introduction to the good doctor. What is completely unnecessary is the full-on transformation we get later on in the film. The scene serves a small purpose in distracting some of the characters from other events occurring at the same time, but mostly it feels out of place - assuming Crowe's Jekyll lingers on for a few more movies, there has to be a better picture for him to pop his Eddie. But again, this smacks of someone losing their nerve over including Jekyll and not having him turn into Hyde.

Direction and/or editing feel a bit all over the place. Action scenes are competently handled, but there are a few what should have been jump scares that completely fail (there is one that worked, but it was the exception). There are also a number of moments that I'm sure had the writers rubbing their hands with glee as they thought of the dread that the scene would evoke. Except the director bottled it every single time.

There's a lot more that's wrong with the film, but I don't think it's quite the desiccated corpse that some reviewers might think it is. Ultimately though, I think what's most appealing about it are the glimpses beneath the bandages of the film that it could have been rather than the misshapen version that we were ultimately given.