Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5

Bottom Line: Tom Cruise is not funny.  Neither is anyone else in this movie.  Some of the action is pretty cool, though.

Once upon a time, there was a movie called “The Mummy” starring Brendan Fraser and it was good.  Not great, but good.  It had that perfect mix of oddball corniness and action that requires a sense of comic timing and versatility that goes unappreciated until a movie like “The Mummy” starring Tom Cruise comes along.  Tom Cruise is a fairly accomplished dramatic actor and he has also made a name for himself in the action movie category as well, but by moving from a serious action star to a comedic action star, he has finally found his weak spot.  Now, you might think that a poor comedic action star might still not ruin a movie if you surround him by actual comedic actors and beef up the writing a bit.  And you would be correct as can be seen by the success of the “Mission Impossible” franchise with the addition of Simon Pegg, among other.  They tried that in this movie by adding Jake Johnson of “New Girl” fame.  Johnson has a decent comedic repertoire, but man does he fall completely flat as Cruise’s sidekick.  Every single attempt to be funny in this movie goes over as well as a lead balloon to the point that you almost have to laugh at how poor the comedic attempts are, when you can recognize them as such.

Luckily, the movie isn’t a complete waste of time.  The back story of the Big Bad, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) is pretty cool, if not nearly fleshed out (ha ha, get it, because she’s a mummy?) enough. There is also some decent action to be had, filled with rats and zombie-mummies and plummeting airplaines, but that can’t quite save the movie from the likes of questionable plot points and questionabler appearances by the likes of Russell Crowe in an attempt to make a franchise of the whole affair.

Despite all this, I actually recommend that you do see “The Mummy”, only the 1999 version with Brendan Fraser.  You should mostly pretend that the 2017 version never existed.  And hopefully, the studio execs will as well.