The Mummy Returns (2001)

Director: Stephen Sommers

Cast: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vosloo, Dwayne Johnson

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Did I Like It: I don’t think I’m being excessively controversial by saying the special effects of The Mummy (1999) don’t really hold up nearly twenty-five years later*. Every time a scarab or a group scene large than fifteen appears on screen, the film begins to resemble a cut scene from an era of video games that might have worked then, but feels quaint now. And yet, that film acquitted itself better than average by being just charming enough in a desert of Indiana Jones films**, that it’s flaws could forgiven, if not completely ignored in service of a good time.

The same cannot be said for The Mummy Returns. The film is rather infamous—if only in my own memory—nearly to a level of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987) for having special effects that could not hold up even at the time of initial viewing. The final battle with the Scorpion King (Rock, in his film debut) was such a clunky master’s class in running afoul of the uncanny valley, that it looked—at best—like a cut scene from a Playstation 1 game at a time where we had all moved on to our Playstations 2. Now, nearly ever special effect appears to be a work in progress which subsequently ran out of money.

Are the film’s effects so obnoxious that the film sputters from distraction to distraction? Or are the charms contained within diminished so that the film cannot surpass its flaws?Indeed, in those sequences which don’t use CGI, there might be just enough charm for me to try and relax. But Fraser’s impishness is on the wane and Weisz’s delightful nerd waif of the first film shifts into a far more standard and less surprising heroine. The effects might be bad enough, or the charm might be lacking, but I tend to think its both.

*I may have made this reference, and forgive my increasingly aging mind if I had, but excuse me while I realize I must have drunk from the wrong Grail. I know, wrong movie.

**We’re arguably still in the middle of that desert, but back then even the prospect of another Indy movie after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) was far from guaranteed. I know, I know. Wrong movie.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Yes.

Did I Like It: I can’t say I was ever in a market for a sequel to the Robin Williams vehicle Jumanji (1995). I can’t even imagine anyone who was aching for a second installment. And that may be the secret to the twenty-year-plus after the fact sequel: Proceed only when expectations are non existant.

It also helps to make the film in a genre completely different from the original. Many have tried for the post-modern riff on The Breakfast Club (1985). They even tried to force the Power Rangers into that mold one time. Here, it largely works because the film is not coming from the same stable of filmmakers that make every other modern entry of hum-drum spectacle (I’m looking in your direction, Zach Snyder), but instead someone with legitimate comedy credentials in Kasdan (Orange County (2002), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)). 

It also helps that each of the key cast members are playing against type. Black and Hart’s performances might have been one-note jokes that would have lived and died in the trailer for the movie, but they are legitimately funny screen presences, so that helps. There are few actresses who can be pointedly easy as the eyes and still believably act like they were never aware of it, but Gillan is that performer.

And then there’s The Rock, or at this point we should really call him Mr. Johnson. That he could come from the world of professional wrestling and still be an engaging and charming leading man in action movies makes him singular in his field. That he is able to evoke the nebbish and not take his macho image at all seriously puts him far above most of his action star brethren. Only Schwarzenegger has credibly brought his presence to comedy, and even he has never done so completely divorced from his image of the Austrian Oak. Somebody like Stallone has never gotten close.

It didn’t have to be a Jumanji film; it’s merely a film far more enjoyable than it had any right or expectation to be.

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed it in the theater. May be missing a lot of movies in the theater for a while. Sigh. 

Let’s not get into that right now.

Did I Like It: There is nothing wrong with this second (third?) movie in this series. It’s reasonably funny. It is adequately filled with the kind of adventure-film tropes one would expect from the series. The stars are all people I would have no trouble watching in really any movie in which they might appear. 

To that note, Warner Bros. would be insane to not let Karen Gillan play Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Oracle?) in a movie, and let her direct it, but Warner Bros. has been pretty thoroughly insane in their missed opportunities with that character so far. 

Dwayne Johnson continues to make his wrestling career an afterthought for his career, playing equal measures weirdo and pulp hero. He could have been an unbelievably awesome Doc Strange, were it to come to pass, but it seems like we’re going to get stuck with some merely competent former wrestler/actor like John Cena or Donald Trump*.

Let’s not get into any of those things right now.

But all of this was present in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). The film explores some new territory with its characters, bringing in the energy of Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, and Awkwafina into the mix. Ultimately all of these new additions and how they play into the film came fully delivered with the film’s first trailer. Upon watching that trailer, I thought this new film would be as fresh and exciting as the original (second?) film.

As it turns out, it’s more of the same. Not a complete condemnation, but not a delivery on the promise it once showed.

*Yes, absolutely, that was low hanging fruit. Did it make me smile to type it? Also, absolutely.

Moana (2016)

Director: Ron Clements, John Musker

Cast: Auli’I Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison

Have I Seen It Before?: No.

Did I like it?: Yes.

After the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, and the pollination of creative executives into Disney Animation, the Mouse House has lifted itself out of its slump and produced insanely watchable movies, whereas before they were content to churn out direct-to-video sequels and make just enough money to make sure the shareholders stay happy.

Moana happily fits in this Disney renaissance. The script is perfectly crafted, to the point where it could legitimately be used in examples for books about writing screenplays. The setting is new and interesting. I cannot think of any film that immerses itself in Polynesian culture and mythology like we see here. The cast is both filled and headlined with performers representative of the cultures depicted.

And yet, something about the movie bothers me. It feels like such a story should not only include representation in front of the camera, but also behind. This story should have come out of the cultural marrow of someone from that culture. Pixar isn’t necessarily blind to this, as their recent short Bao (2018) brilliantly showed. Am I to truly believe the three people best qualified to both write and direct the tale of Maui (Johnson) and Moana (Cravalho) are three white guys from Burbank who had sufficient seniority in the Walt Disney Corporation.

By all indications, the writing of the film went through several hands before it reached its final version, credited to Disney in-house writer Jared Bush. At one point, even Taika Waititi took a pass at it that was apparently largely abandoned. It’s heartening that the film credited a large team of cultural advisors, but one of them didn’t have a burning story to tell on their own? It’s a fine film. The music keeps occasionally running its way through my head, even as I type this a few days after first watching the film.

I just can’t help think that there was an even better film somewhere in there, and the corporate realities of modern film-making robbed us of something that could have been not just special, but transcendent.

Why in the hell wouldn’t they go with a script originally written by Taika Waititi? Why?