The Mummy

Actually, it's good. The Mummy has its flaws, but Tom Cruise's charisma, the fast pace and the effort to introduce a new world for two hours easily entertains. The opening is reminiscent of Indy or the “Uncharted” games, the horror interludes work surprisingly well, and at times The Mummy straddles the line between PG-13 and R-rated. You probably won't be downright scared, but saying it’s horror adventure is not an exaggeration. There's more or less always something going on, and once they stop trying for funny interludes, it really paces just as you'd expect and hope after the trailers. In the end, it's a bit of a bummer that while The Mummy is a proper adventure flick, it unfortunately doesn't offer any scenes that you'll be excitedly describing to your friends and sending them to the cinema. As the start of a potentially interesting cinematic universe, however, it works without the slightest problem, and I'll happily be there next time. (11/06/2017)

It's a real shame about this new Dark Universe attempt. It's always nice when a classic gets a new coat of paint so that even the youngest generation can enjoy a new take on it and discover the original at the same time. But this is where it all ended prematurely. Genre-wise it's an unbalanced mess and the whole thing feels terribly confident, and no alternative admits that The Mummy should be a solitary film. But unfortunately, it is, and in retrospect, the aftertaste of the unfulfilled fragment remains. Moreover, Tom Cruise is no longer the rascal he would probably like to remain until his death. Annabelle Wallis, the queen of historical series (The Tudors, Peaky Blinders, and Pan Am), didn't particularly impress me either. Sofia Boutella and Russell Crowe are slightly better, but it's not enough. I was hoping the classic duo of Kurtzman & Orci were enough for it to be great, but Hercules and Zorro were more successful. (29/11/2019)

A bit of horror, a bit of humor, always adventure. I liked The Mummy very much, and I was quite surprised, because I really like the original 1932 film and this newer version as well. It's a very entertaining spectacle with many imaginative scenes (that doesn't mean, of course, that something similar has never been done before), pleasantly quick but not frantic momentum, a sympathetic cast, and the bombastic music of Brian Tyler. The non-forgettable finale gave me similar joy as the zombie crusaders. And I didn't expect to ever see Tom Cruise in a “girl in trouble" role. (16/06/2017)

An incredibly moronic piece of crap that applies often completely non-continuous bridges to connect scenes and timelines, utterly fails to functionally or stylistically connect the alternating character journeys (from fantasy horror to bloated adventure comedy, WTF?), and at a point where it should be building up without bullshit and at least visually entertaining the viewer, it locks itself in a room with one of the most useless characters ever played by an A-list actor. Even the otherwise likeable Cruise couldn't help here; something so dull, unimaginative and oddly edited is a disgrace to the thriving Universal of recent years. (07/08/2017)

Totally unworthy of Tom Cruise's star power. Well, yeah, there's a shortage of good original writers in A-list Hollywood productions, or there's no interest in them, so they recycle and reboot to the point of madness to create new film universes. Marvel has theirs, DC Comics has theirs, and starting with this film, Universal has theirs, with the starkly original Dark Universe title that seeks to revive the iconic monsters of the 1930s and 40s horror franchises. But the first runner they sent was a lazy bum who would have lost a 100-meter race to a turtle. This is a fairly routine, formulaic, almost B-movie 100 minutes. Well, let's say that the first 40 minutes or so follow in the footsteps of a mediocre adventure flick with a protagonist and a cute female scientist by his side, with some nice location changes and Cruise talking for his life, culminating in an excellent airplane scene in weightlessness. But with the arrival of Dr. Jekyll (and Mr. Hyde – for the less astute), the film becomes regular crap, throwing in one B-movie cliché after another, with the set never leaving the doctor's office and the dull backdrop of the London catacombs, all drowned in darkness to make it easier to render the CGI. At the end, there is no door, but a gate open for the next sequel and I will definitely not be there anymore. I've always considered Cruise to be a 100% pro who chooses his roles carefully, but he stepped in some serious shit here. Yet he is the only good thing about the whole film, he plays with such commitment that it makes me wish I had as much verve as him at 55. But the positives end there and the overseas reviews really didn't lie this time. This is truly one of the worst films Cruise has left his signature on. (10/06/2017)