REVIEW: New ‘Mummy’ a monstrous miss

Let’s get right to it. The new “Mummy” remake is everything that’s wrong with modern event cinema.

It’s full of poor character development, clunky dialogue and tedious action sequences. It wastes talented performers, impressive sets and a chance to establish the Universal Monsters as a top-notch draw for movie audiences. It’s dumb, dull and shallow, and it doesn’t even manage to entertain.

The story’s a classic one: Treasure hunters Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) stumble across ancient ruins while trying to evade angry locals. Jenny Halsey (Allabelle Wallis) shows up to confirm that the boys found a prison designed to hold some great evil. The three of them remove a sarcophagus holding the mummified princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who soon escapes and wreaks havoc. And, of course, she must be stopped.

It would take forever to break down every specific flaw in this movie, so here are the ones that stood out the most to me:

• Nick’s character arc was completely unsatisfying. It’s like they came up with a beginning and an ending but didn’t bother to show him develop at all. He just hits a point where the story needs him to flip, and he flips.
• Nick and Jenny’s relationship is wholly unbelievable because the movie gives no reason to believe a girl like Jenny could dig a dirtbag like Nick.
• Wasting Jake Johnson. That’s hard to do, but they found a way to do it.
• A night-time chase scene involving a van that’s so poorly lit and shot, that it becomes a boring moonlight-blue blur.
• Boutella is a uniquely athletic performer, but her character’s powers were limited to old-hat fare, like conjuring dust storms, summing hordes of vermin and tossing humans around like bean bags. Yaaaaaawn.
• Would it kill screenwriters to actually listen to the way real humans talk before writing movies like this? Because the dialogue in this movie — ugh!

The lone bright spot in “The Mummy” (apart from a wicked cool explosion the happens about 10 minutes in) is Russell Crowe’s character. He plays a mysterious doctor on a mission to fight monsters and eradicate evil. His onscreen presence is palpable, and he’s the only person in the movie who looks like they’re enjoying themselves. Of course, director Alex Kurtzman finds a way to almost ruin this by stopping the main plot to place set-up for future movies involving Crowe’s character. Did the filmmakers learn nothing from “Iron Man 2”?

“The Mummy” should be Exhibit A in the case against big-budget Hollywood remakes. All the fun and charm of previous incarnations of the story has been scooped out and replaced with “dark” visual aesthetics and “cool” shaky-cam action scenes.

Tom Cruise fans may dig this, since he still gets to hang out the side of a crashing airplane and finds multiple reasons to take his shirt off. (It must be said: The dude looks magnificent for a guy in his mid-50s.) But this movie doesn’t do anything other movies haven’t done better, and worse, it does it without much humor or wit. Bottom line?

This “Mummy” never should have been exhumed.

1 ½ Indy Fedoras out of 5

MPAA Rating: PG-13