Certificate: U (very mild comic violence, threat, sex references, language). Running Time: 88 mins. UK Distributor: Warner Bros.
WHO’S IN IT?
Joe Thomas, Eleanor Tomlinson, Santiago Winder, Celia Imrie, Hugh Bonneville, Sean Bean, Shakka, Dan Starkey
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Juan Jesús García Galocha (director), Jordi Gasull (writer, producer), Javier López Barreira (writer), Toni Novella, Marc Sabé and Pedro Solís García (producers), Fernando Velázquez (composer), Emily Killick (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Three Ancient Egyptian mummies journey to modern-day London…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MUMMIES?
Families looking for a worthwhile cinema trip this Easter break have a wide selection of options to choose from, whether it’s Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves or Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, or even next week’s big release The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Then, there’s Mummies, a Spanish animated production that now arrives in a UK dubbed version, and given its mediocre quality and basic appeal is destined to be most families’ Plan C or D in case those other movies sell out of tickets.
I’ll be honest, though; this review might not seem fair because I am an adult man, way beyond the target audience for this film, so no matter what I have to say about it, a lot of it can be chalked down to: “it’s just not for me.” That said, I can still tell the difference between what is good and bad, as well as what is just somewhere in the middle, and I can determine that Mummies is as middling as can be.
The film quickly introduces us to a society of Ancient Egyptian mummies that live underground and stay away from the world of the living. In this society, retired chariot racer Thut (voiced by Joe Thomas) is randomly selected to wed the Princess Nefer (Eleanor Tomlinson), the daughter of the Pharaoh (Sean Bean), and is tasked with the safekeeping of a treasured royal wedding ring. However, the world of the living soon makes its way to the mummies’ city thanks to nefarious archaeologist Lord Sylvester Carnaby (Hugh Bonneville), who steals the ring and plans to display it in a new museum exhibit in London.
Determined to get the ring back – largely because he’ll be gruesomely tortured if he doesn’t – Thut sets out with Nefer and his younger brother Sekhem (Santiago Winder) to the world of the living, where they inevitably end up in modern-day London and find themselves taken aback by all the unfamiliar culture around them.
The plot, as well as the trailer, suggests that it’s your typical fish-out-of-water story, but what the trailer doesn’t show you is that it’s a surprising number of other things, including a musical. At least, it very occasionally becomes a musical, with characters suddenly breaking out into formulaic “I want more in life” ballads before just as quickly grinding to a halt.
The musical elements come back in another unexpected detour, that being the A Star Is Born-esque rising popstar narrative, where one of the main characters displays vocals that impress a talent agent, and before they know it they’re singing on rooftops like The Beatles, rapidly going viral on YouTube. Again, this strand is dropped before it even has a chance to go anywhere interesting, which almost begs the question as to why they even included it to begin with.
And, of course, this is the kind of animated movie that ends with not just a big unwarranted dance number, but one where they went for low-hanging fruit and used The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” as the song they’re dancing to.
This is all just to say how little of an idea Mummies has as to what it really wants to be. It’s like the writers were given the classic fish-out-of-water template to work with, but then decided it wasn’t appealing enough to Gen Z and proceeded to cram in all these timely themes and hip slang that doesn’t make much sense.
In fairness, it works better when they’re actually in the unfamiliar modern world, but during the beginning when our lead mummies are just going about their day in this inexplicable underground world (which already runs on nonsense logic such as relying on fiery phoenixes to choose newlyweds rather than a more straightforward succession policy), characters are constructing hieroglyphs like they’re text messages or selfies, and talking in ways that few people, let alone Ancient Egyptians, would actually speak in worlds out of time like this. Therefore, it doesn’t add up that characters that already come from a society designed to reflect our modern reality would be confused and bewildered by all the modern things that they end up encountering.
Like I said, perhaps I am pointing out all these inconsistencies because I’m not less than ten years old. I’m sure that the intended age demographic will enjoy this movie perfectly fine, since there are some silly moments of slapstick to giggle over, and the animation is colourful enough to hook their attention. However, as an adult, I was mostly just sitting there watch a movie happen; I was never hating it, simply because I’ve seen far worse movies like this, but neither was I ever finding myself surprised by it, even with all of the weird directions that it takes. The film just exists as a short distraction for kids (and it is short, thank goodness, at 88 minutes long) and a mostly lame time-waster for adults.
In short, maybe wait next week for Mario instead, because good or bad it’ll at least have a reason for existing.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Mummies is a mediocre family film that boasts enough colourful animation and silliness for kids to enjoy, but from an adult’s perspective it’s uncertain of what it wants to be and makes frustratingly little sense when it tries to explore its own world and characters.
