The greatest magic trick The Mummy ever perfromed was casting Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.
Or something like that.
Weisz boasts as she keeps rising in her posture and volume.
But I am proud of what I am…Iam a librarian!
Modern blockbusters and franchise films should be so lucky to do the same.
But when it shines, it dazzles like the desert sun.
One might even suggest theyre arrested at a half-dozen years before that.
Which is perhaps one of the key reasonsThe Mummyremains so timeless today.
Admittedly, Sommers adventure flick wasnt exactly reinventing the wheel when it was released in May 1999.
When we meet Evie in the film, she is neither helpless nor obligatory.
In fact, shes performing a sight gag that would do Charlie Chaplin proud.
Weisz is introduced as hovering, ever so precariously, on an elephant ladder between two bookcases.
The subsequent crash makes for a spectacular sight gag.
Evie is a genuine scholar and nerd, by contrast.
Nearly every line Weisz has piques OConnell and the audiences interest in Egyptology through sheer enthusiasm and charisma.
Meanwhile, for all his swashbuckling swagger, Frasers Rick could never be mistaken as Errol Flynn.
This time round, he could very well double as an illustration out of an Edward Rice Burroughs paperback.
Weisz plays her role sincere while Frasers turn is bemused.
But it is the combined blending of those energies that gives their chemistry its riveting insatiability.
Its Fraser and Weiszs ability to seduce one another, and us.
Together these characters are equals without being identical in personality or talent.
The movie allows each of its heroes to have complementary strengths instead of redundant similarities.
It heightens their individuality as well as the films strong reliance on an opposites attract energy.
A Love Story That Kept Kicking
The wild success ofThe Mummytook Universal Pictures by surprise.
Back then that was considered a massive haul for an original(ish) summer movie.
So a sequel was immediately greenlit.
Arriving a scant two years later,The Mummy Returnsis hardly the classic that the original film became.
Even so,Sommers never lost sight of the allureof his leads chemistry.
It was ostensibly intended to replicate the sizzle of the first films will-they-or-wont-they-get-together; instead the movie curdled it.
Also, frankly my dear, the movie remains the best Indiana Jones flick made after 1989.
