Cast: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Keyin J. O'Conner, Jonathan Hyde, Oded Fehr, Bernard Fox Director: Stephen Sommers. Grade: B How does one seriously remake a movie a movie about a 3000-year-old mummy? The answer is that you don't: when remaking such a prepsoterous premise, remake it not so seriously. Such is the approach (and appropriately so) to this special-effects adventure/horror/comedy. Picture the effects of Twister, the adventurousness of Indiana Jones, and the ironic self-awareness of Scream, and that's about the hodge-podge we have here. Back in BC times, the pharoah's priest (Vosloo) was sleeping with the pharoah's mistress. His punishment when caught was to be given the worst curse of all. He was mummified alive, and buried with a thousand flesh-eating bugs, who eat the flesh "very slowly." Part of the curse, however, was that if anyone reawakened him, he'd bring back the ten plagues of Egypt. Naturally when the Mummy comes to life, he's rather upset. Enter into the frame treasure-hunter Fraser, historian Weisz, and her wise-cracking greedy brother Hannah, and we have ourselves a trio of protagonists ready to take on whatever they encounter. Fraser plays his rugged manliness for the bravado all the screen legends of the 1920's embodied. He can do anything and has so much cool toughness that when the Mummy first roars at him, Fraser roars right back. Weisz is more like the clutzy type of heroine. No matter how she tries to help, half thre time she just makes things worse. I loved how half the time they read from ancient text, they'd read the wrong the page which only brought more plagues and evil demons upon them. The Mummy is not a movie to be taken seriously. It uses some adventure cliches very blatantly. There's the selfish servant (O'Conner) who would rather serve on the right hand of the devil than die opposing him. There's the fanatical tribe of protectorates who have overseen the Mummy's grave for 3000 years. (Remember the cult who protected the Holy Grail in the third Indiana Jones movie?) All of this is for fun, and while some may dismiss this movie is silly, I thought it was a great introduction to the kind of entertainment the summer season was made for. Back to Masters of Role Playing #7 Table of Contents Back to Masters of Role Playing List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Chalice Publications. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com