THE MUMMY (52)

Directed by: Stephen Sommers

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Kevin J. O'Connor

The Pitch: High priest Imhotep returns from the dead. And he's not happy...

Theo Sez: Actually plays better in the memory than while watching it, partly because it builds to a tremendous climax - one of those epic, well-orchestrated set-pieces, with five or six things happening at once and Ray Harryhausen skeletons running amuck - leaving you feeling happily sated and ready to forgive the rest of it, which hovers uneasily between comedy and unpleasantness. The main problem is an overly busy quality, never letting the story breathe - the journey to Hamunaptra, for example, should've had the tang of old-fashioned adventure, with the sense of gradually approaching something potent and undiscovered, but it gets so crowded with gun-battles and camel-races you barely remember where it's going ; the model is presumably the Indiana Jones films, but they wrested a different kind of magic through dizzying cinematic flair, whereas this is just big-budget childishness, noisy and high-spirited with an appetite for destruction and a definite sadistic streak (the demise of Kevin J. O'Connor's duplicitous Arab seems especially bloodthirsty, given that he's used mainly for comic relief). Has its moments though, from the stentorian voice-over in the prologue to arcane curses ("Sons of the Pharaoh!") and a pert, perky heroine drawing herself up to her full height to declare "I am a librarian!", not to mention cameos by the Ten Plagues Of Egypt (as themselves) ; FX range from unconvincing to spectacular, wisecracks from flip to funny - and the concept of the tomb's defilers being picked off one by one, "Ten Little Indians"-style, is quite effectively nightmarish. Even if you do wonder why they just hang around waiting for the monster to show up.