"The Mummy" (2017)

Tom Cruise plays a lot of things well...but being a man possesed by unseen forces does nothing for him. Like when he did Lestat in "Interview With A Vampire." The problem...?
...his mulling serious speak is comically mis-timed. Anything old English is awful. As anything that requires he be a cad. That said...this movie isn't nearly as bad as everyone is saying.

Cruise stars as Nick Morton, a soldier of fortune whose reckless abandon through the Middle East lands him in the pit of which a mummy of Ahmanet is buried. She is a mean bitch who needs another carrier for her boyfriend whom they both conjured up to be evil rulers of the world. Ahmanet is played by Sofia Boutella ("The Kingsman"). Morton is saddled with a sidekick named Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), which I assume will be someone in the upcoming future Universal's Dark Universe, if they can get past the haters of this one and also Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), a archeologist who after a night of unseen boning with Morton discovers he had ripped her off of a map that located this mummy.

After unearthing the dead...Morton is cursed by Ahmanet. And now must be the new sacrifice in order for her to bring back her lover and rule the universe.

They also start to shoe-horn a few other characters that are strange in this world. Dr. Jekyll for instance is played by Russell Crowe. A payday to say the least. But somehow played broad enough that he doesn't need to return for any sequel.

The jokes do fall a little short. They cram as much into a sentence as possible, but still end up a bit...stiff. In the 1999 version with Brendan Fraser, his glib and arrogant banter with Rachel Weisz seemed much more fun and...well...the characters are suppose to be screwball. You almost feel Cruise and Jake Johnson are suppose to be Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

I do admit that something is missing from this movie. A feeling that Cruise could have offered a bit more reservation. Maybe he's now content to phone in a lot of his performances. Shame. This was also directed by Alex Kurtzman, who previously produced movies.

This movie is not really for the American market. It's going to make a ton in China, but for us...I think we're done with these monster movies. We're too jaded and angry with it now. Vampires and werewolves seem low-rent now. Which is a total shame. There is a way to make it scary again. Maybe another "Monster Squad." But then...who frightens children anymore.