Joyce Glasser reviews Mummies (March 31, 2023) Cert. U, 88 mins.
Juan Jesús García Galocha’s stop-frame animation film, appropriately dubbed into English by a cast including Hugh Bonneville, Sean Bean, Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark), Joe Thomas (Inbetweeners) and singer-songwriter-producer Shakka, has a promising premise, but not the script, let alone the music, to sustain it. All kids love mummies and as the crowds in the British Museum and films from the popular Kharis series in the 1940s to 2017’s The Mummy starring Tom Cruise attest, adults find the lure hard to resist, too. Unfortunately, there’s not enough beyond the cliched love story for the adults – although kiddies will have a reasonably good time.
For some reason that is never really explained, and perhaps cannot be, a tiny bit of the Egyptian Empire survives and seems to be aware of the more modern world (at least as far as the Roman Empire) above them. Instead of burying a body in a tomb that is now underground, here is an entire civilisation underground. It has a Pharaoh (Sean Bean) who is able to close mechanical skies to indicate nighttime and wants to marry off his daughter Nefer (Eleanor Tomlinson) who must be 16.
Nefer, however, has no intention of marrying especially since her husband is, like her father, unlikely to allow her to sing and dance. Nefer wants to be free to make her own choices and carve out her own destiny which includes being a singer.
We don’t know a lot about Egyptian music, but Jordi Gasull (Tad: The Explorer) and Javier Barreira (Tad the Lost Explorer and The Secret of King Midas) believe the desire to express oneself by song is a universal desire as old as time itself. Meanwhile, we do know that girls who disagree with their daddies on marriage is pretty old, too.
When we first meet Nefer, however, it’s in a road rage incident where this independent minded, feisty, self-confident aristocrat, collides with an charioteer celebrity Thut (Joe Thomas) fresh from signing autographs of his memoirs. Thut’s first secret is that he stopped racing because he has imposter syndrome and feels frightened. The Ben-Hur-styled race that opens the film almost costs him his life. Thut’s second secret – surely related – is that he fears falling in love, too.
So when he and resentful Nefer meet in adversarial circumstances, both take on an immediate dislike of the other. We’ve seen it before in many classic rom coms, such as It Happened One Night, Suspicion and The African Queen.
Naturally, circumstances conspire to bring them together to learn that they are really made for one another. In this case it’s thanks to an ancient Egyptian ritual that is thwarted by Thut’s little brother’s (Santiago Winder) boomerang, resulting in Thut being dragged to the Royal Palace, only to learn he has been chosen to marry the Pharoah’s daughter.
The Pharaoh presents him with a precious ring that he must retain until the marriage ceremony or suffer the same grim fate he would suffer if he refuses to marry Nefer. Marriage to a rich princess is better than having his eyes and tongue removed, so he hides the ring in a tomb.
Little does he know that celebrity archaeologist, Lord Sylvester Carnaby (Hugh Bonneville), whose private museum is a major tourist attraction, is just about to bulldoze into that very tomb to feed his hunger for Queen Nefer fare and her ring. Most archaeologists try to preserve rather than crush, but not Lord Sylvester, a man with more money than sense and two goons as his sole assistants.
Finding the tomb raided and the ring gone, Thut has no choice but to venture into the world above and find it. Sole guardian of a little brother and pet baby crocodile, he brings them along, which is just as well. A lot is made of the little brother understanding modern technology because of his youth, to the point where he can break into a building and drive a London bus, although Thut can’t be older than 25.
Naturally, there wouldn’t be a film if Nefer did not accompany him, and although there is no rhyme nor reason for her knowing about this excursion let alone wanting to accompany a young man she despises, she goes too. We know exactly what will happen as the two bond in this adventure to bring home the ring.
The whole purpose of having three humans from ancient Egypt running around modern London is to create a fish out of water film and no one should be as lost as these three. But they adapt surprisingly well aside from looking at cars and buses as giant chariots.
One of the first sequences sees the trio somehow get mistaken for extras in a West End production of Aida (of course) which they think is taking place for real. Nefer resents this distortion of her history and interrupts the show to claim her title in a typical Britain’s Got Talent belt out song (sung by Karina Pasian). She is noticed by Ed (Shakka) who lets them crash at his swanky record producer pad when Lord Sylvester – who is chasing them around London, tries to abduct them.
Nefer knows just what to do when Ed produces her hit single that we are meant to believe climbs the charts to number one in a matter of two days. Smart dude: he is left with all the money as by then Nefer is gone. The original score is composed by Fernando Velazquez (The Impossible, A Monster Calls, The Orphanage).
It is remarkable that while Ed is aware of Lord Sylvester’s plot to abduct the two mummies, he says nothing to the police, the British Museum or the Egyptian embassy, focusing on his record. And the press are absent in Lord Sylvester’s remarkable discovery that matches a symbol on Nefer’s necklace on her dress with the design of the ring. He is able to chase the pair back to Egypt and attack their underground hideout and the Pharoah, without the objections of the Egyptian authorities.
Children will be happy to forgive these lapses and the lack of imagination in establishing the Egyptian civilisation as well as in the dialogue, but adults may be less inclined, particularly without any jokes.
